New Yorkers Will Pay $56 a Month to Trim a Minute Off Their Commute

fivethirtyeight.com

Kind of a click-baity title, as even the article acknowledges:

> Those trade-offs aren’t just about commuting time. Places with short commutes are also often places with other desirable characteristics: restaurants, nightlife and convenience, both in terms of getting to other places in and around the city and of getting people from other parts of the city to come to your neighborhood.

So no, we're not paying $56 a month to trim a minute off; we're paying to be near more interesting things. (I think my commute actually got longer since we moved from an express stop to a local.)

Another way to put it might be to say that because neighborhoods near the center are more valuable and attract more people, they also tend to attract other desirables, and that those other desirables tend to further drive up their value. When you rent in New York, you pay for location. A big part of the location equation is your commute. Another huge chunk of it is your neighborhood. And because the two are heavily correlated, commute time by itself tends to track total value of location quite accurately, to the point where on average every minute in reduced commute results in a $56/month increase in rent.

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