Why It’s So Hard to Change People’s Commuting Behavior

Then where I work enacted a plan where we pay any day that we park at the office, and get a bonus any day we take alternate transit. The plan is designed to be revenue neutral for the company while incentivizing people to not drive and park.

I bike every single day now. In fact, I'd probably keep biking if they stopped the plan because I'm used to it now and really like it. But it was so hard to change my commuting habit.

I feel like the drive to work is a point in the day where humans have absolute minimal executive function and willpower. By the time I'm heading out the door, I don't want to be thinking strategically or trying to make the world better or anything. I just want to get the fuck to work and use my brainpower there.

There is more than just initial design, however: there are many design elements that add to its drawing power. These include accessibility, good "way finding" signs, frequency of trains (every 3 minutes in busy times), safety on platforms, and (for me anyway), signs that accurately show arrival times of the next three trains.

Of course, there is still the problem of making the system useful for people who are not close enough to walk to a stop, the answer being good feeder bus service and car parks. In this respect, Vancouver has been less successful. For example, only a few bus stops have electronic signs showing the arrival times of the next bus, and bus frequency on all but the major routes is too low.

My point is that good overall design is the almost certainly the most effective way to change people's commuting behaviour.

Additionally, human beings aren't perfectly rational. Driving a car individually is like fast food, even if it were bad for you in real terms, people would still use it because it's easy and convenient. This is also behind the success of ride-sharing and food delivery apps. They put convenience front and center.

IMHO, the way to change commuting behavior is to place an extreme bias on the right of way of mass transit methods. People will take the bus, if the bus doesn't have to wait in traffic. Then improve convenience with an app like interface that maps out transfers. Make it so taking a bus is as easy as taking an Uber/lyft.

Then don't bother trying to change the habits of people who have already been commuting for a decade, instead try to accommodate the growing non-driving younger segment of the population. Make it so the college student doesn't have to buy that car to begin with, and their habits will stay with them as an adult.

Fundamentally it blames the victim.

Carpooling won't work because even if people go to work at the same time (by some miracle no one is sidetracked in the process), getting home is even more unreliable given different workloads, so someone might get stranded. What to do then if you're in the burbs? Eat a 100$ taxi that might be a significant chunk of the take home pay they earned that day? Take an even longer time on things like busses that they haven't navigated before?

Biking is great until there is rain, snow, cold, and it exposes the rider to a far greater risk of catastrophic injury, and the downside of getting a flat is a lot worse than in a car since changing the innertube is often about a 50% chance of actually solving the problem if there are splinters or a bad outertube.

As for the victim blaming, companies should be obligated to providing comprehensive transit networks, or contribute to the existing transit networks. If the company is the usual adult daycare cubefarm office junk, then a company should be obligated to providing telecommuting options for parttime at least, and several office centers (especially in downtowns near transit nexuses).

Yes Americans suck. But they also are overworked, underserved by infrastructure, and given little options by businesses and governments.

In the article they claimed that they either tried to survey the employees and tried to influence their behavior.

Problem I have with the survey: They're trying to collect data, but try to influence them at the same time towards an outcome that they're looking for.

Additionally: They tried to push their policy about how they feel towards cars and completely ignored the needs and reasons why the people behaved as they did. It sounds like the wants of the "participants" of the change were in agreement. But it sounds like the implementation was a complete disaster. (Yet it never explains how they went from 100 participants to 3 in 3 months) They came up with excuses about why it was the employees fault for not changing how they wanted them to.

a) Live downtown and commute to a suburb, or

b) Live in a suburb and commute downtown

it's basically useless.

I live SE from downtown and work due south of downtown. To bus to work, I'd have to take a 30 minute bus downtown, then a 45 minute bus back out to work. My drive is only 25 minutes.

Until they dramatically expand the bus lines, my only option is to either move or pursue a job that matches our transportation system.

I have also carpooled. This is also a hassle depending on your regularity and the regularity of those in the carpool. Missing turns due to travel, sickness, vacations, etc. means setting up swaps with other drivers. It also is a hassle if you need to work late or get in early. Not all carpool members are agreeable. I once carpooled with a person who held conversations with people in the back seat - the problem was that he couldn't talk to them without looking back at them - fairly hair-raising.

I stopped driving like a jackass.

I used to accelerate rapidly at every green light and decelerate rapidly at every red light.

I stopped doing both of these things. I went from an average of getting 267 miles per tank of gas to 322, an over 20% increase.

Instead of wondering why my tires and brakes lasted half as long as everyone else they now last longer than average.

The amazing thing is I get to my destinations just as quickly. I always used to wonder how the ETA was still accurate on Waze even when I drove at full speed. All I was doing was racing to the next red light.

I’m embarrassed writing this because I drove so stupidly for so long. If it helps anyone else, here is my stupidity for all to see.

Give them the stick!!

Seriously, why don’t we simply improve mass transit so more people want to take it?

Even in NYC where it’s the best in America, it can still be painful. Try commuting from Brooklyn to NJ, or 4 miles to the east side of Manhattan from NJ.

25 years ago I lived 50 miles from Manhattan and the best an express train could do was 65 minutes to the city. I even wrote a letter to MetroNorth.

We’re about to enter the third decade of the 21st Century. How about trains that go 125 mph?

Where are the maglevs?

China, of course:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-maglev-t...

The problem that I usually see when someone brings up this idea is that the employee's "cost" is ignored. I used to live in the Washington, D.C. area, where I could walk or take the bus to the subway. One way, the total time was 30 minutes longer than driving. Between the cost of the subway and my time, it was cheaper to drive.

For 18 years, I commuted year-round by bike, rather than drive. It took as long as the bus-subway combination from my last apartment. While it took more time, I did not have to pay for gas and my maintenance costs were minimal.

I'm all for doing what's right for the environment, but I can't stand tricky uses of statistics.

That statistic has almost nothing to do with the proceeding statement.

This is also a great of example of trying to blame environmental issues on individuals (see: recycling).

On metros here, there is no 1st class coach I could pay for to get some distance, quiet and respectable company.

So the personal car it is. Unless you fix people, I will use all my privilege to keep myself comfortable.

Employees already voluntarily increase those costs if they can, by buying more expensive and less efficient vehicles.

The only thing I've read that makes sense is for people to live closer to things, and that's hard to make happen overnight. For instance, as a bicycle commuter, I'm aware that many if not most of my colleagues live many miles from work. Thus the debate about transportation mode is practically moot.

To fix public transit in America we need to build high density residential building around existing stations with shops on the ground floor. Then it will be rational to use public transit.

Driving around picking people up consumes precious morning time. In exchange, one sacrifices their bespoke commuting routine.

That is, instead of getting to work in 40 minutes of listening to RPG podcasts with the window open in winter, I get there in an hour and fifteen while engaging in small talk and compromising on climate control.

People don’t just forego carpooling because the costs Of driving are externalized; they forego carpooling because carpooling carries significant personal costs.

Is there a reason these analysts couldn’t bother to include the element of “people don’t carpool because it sucks”?

They don't bear the full financial cost of transit commuting either, since transit is heavily subsidized.

Here is where someone will say "but roads are subsidized." Of course they are. However, those who drive their own vehicles bear the full cost of the capital asset they use (that is, the car). Transit systems recover only a portion of their operating cost - and NONE of their capital cost - from fares.

Despite the big operating cost, capital cost, and opportunity cost of driving (that is, while driving one has to drive, but while commuting on transit, someone can sometimes do something else like read) people still like to drive. The reason is that for many people driving is a far superior mode of transportation. You couldn't pay them to take transit.

- They sent direct mail and pamphlets, each of which has terrible conversion rates in general. Why not email or SMS?

- What was the signup/enrollment like? Was it easy and something that could be done from a phone without a login/password setup, or did it involve mailing forms to some random office with an unclear timeline?

- Did they assess why people didn’t enroll?

If you want people to engage in something new, make it ridiculously easy.

A frequent auto-apologist has again reiterated in this thread that alternative commuting, particularly by bicycle, simply doesn't work for most Americans simply on account of the geography of most American cities.

Where do you think that geography came from?!!!

When "transport" meant "walking", or for the very lucky, horse-drawn, or beginning around the 1880s, electrically-powered street-cars, cities were a mile or so across -- about the distance a person could walk in 20-30 minutes.

With 30 minutes of expressway travel now being about 30 miles, you end up with cities 30-60 miles across, particularly if they co-evolved with the automobile. This is no accident.

Activities and services which might have been co-located, or closely-located, aren't: housing, work, factories, offices, schools, parks, shopping, entertainment.

I've commuted, variously, by bicycle, boat, bus, train, and far more often then I'd care to admit, by car. When living in cities with post-1930s layouts, the latter is virtually almost necessary. Even in cities whose downtown cores were laid out in the 19th century, late-20th and early-21st century patterns prefer offices, shops, and other activities spread widely across the landscape, with poor bike accessibility.

The best cycling options have been relatively compact, fairly flat, and dense areas (with a few exceptions). Under such circumstances, and with cycling highly encouraged by design, cycling is not only possibly but vastly the suprior option.

Transit-based commuting is an option where high densities and high service levels support it. Even then, there are very few US urban regions in which this is truly an option, and there, most usually only within the urban core. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston make up most of those.

An allergy to density, aversion to new construction, a preference for sprawl, racist legacies concerning both land-use and transit, and grossly misguided attempts to inflate real estate assets rather than maximise regional and national common weal, are other factors with large contributions to this problem.

Mail-based commuter incentives are like trying to ignite a bonfire in an iceberg. The conditions are absolutely inimicable to the goals.

My boyfriend works 1 mile from work and he took them almost everyday in the beginning. When the cities all cracked down and required a licensing fee for each one, the numbers were drastically reduced and they were no longer consistently available within a 2-3 minute walk. So back in the car he went. We've looked into buying one but right now they're too expensive, heavy, and unreliable to own. It's so much easier to just leave it when you arrive and not worry about maintenance.

Nowadays I mostly motorcycle or occasionally drive the 11-ish miles. Door to door it generally takes 20 - 25 minutes for the former, and 30 for the latter if you pick your time.

Taking the bus is at least an hour even if it's on time because it has so many stops and involves walks at both ends. I just don't have that kind of time to waste. It also doesn't run late into the evening and, which makes it next to impossible to work late when I need to, or to do anything after work.

It's too dangerous to cycle.

So, no, unless and until better alternatives are available I won't be changing the way I commute.

And even if this was true, did not one consider that this might already be part of hiring people? "Look, we cannot offer you that many vacation days, but you'll get free parking, so you'll save half an hour every day in commute."

But yes, creating a new habit like better commuting is hard and hard to do with just a 1-week intervention.

For instance, they would rather sit through traffic for forty minutes, then be on some combination of buses and trains for eighty minutes, because time is an important optimization parameter. A bicycle might get them there in thirty minutes, but it's not for everyone, and particularly not for everyone in all weather. Effort and comfort are optimization parameters for many people.

Traffic and tense situations have their stress, but so does waiting for some bus, and being passed by when it comes because it is too full to pick up any more passengers.

Cycling is dangerous, and tense situations that can occur when cycling in traffic are way more nerve-frazzling than ones that occur in driving, on a more regular basis.

Cycling is a good exception to this, but there is almost no culture supporting the use of bikes (or scooters etc.) and very little planned infrastructure, which leads to extreme hostility from drivers and ultimately to injury and death (just about 30 cyclists this year alone in NYC). City governments are at fault and should be brought to account for this. However, most media attention uses language that implicitly (or sometimes even explicitly) blames the actions of pedestrians and cyclists when they are victims of car violence, rather than the drivers or the design of the city. Even when drivers are themselves blamed, it is assumed that tragic events are only caused by rare incidents involving "bad" drivers, rather than a pervasive culture and systemic organisation that allows for these tragic events to continue unhindered.

There needs to be a strong social backlash against almost any form of personal use of heavy machinery equipped with combustion engines, that is not absolutely necessary, within regions where there are many unprotected people on foot/bike/etc. And this must be directed at governments and other institutions that have the power to but are currently unwilling to create such necessary change. Blaming individuals will not get us there and will only lead to further entrenched "culture war". This is the strategy that was used in the Netherlands which, prior to the 80s, had a very similar commuting landscape to the US but now has massive bicycle and public transit use.

For a lot of companies, there's really no need for long-term fixed colocation, but the economy allows for it since they don't have to account for most of the externalities and 3rd+ degree costs associated with new buildings in ecosystems, construction long-term impacts, or even something as simple for the carbon output of making concrete, all the while reaping the rewards of employees working extra for free in a tightly-controlled environment. And when they inevitably move, there's no legal requirement to pay employees for relocation either. Additional corporate costs anywhere in this ecosystem would probably result in dramatic changes and even more work-from-home opportunities.

Innovative remote-first companies are using the savings to only temporarily colocate their employees in interesting and rewarding ways for all (like all-hands meetups), plus reaping the benefits of naturally-increased written communications, creating a win-win situation for all from what I can tell.

Put another way... the logistics/efficiencies/costs of everything is very different for those involved when individuals have to transport groceries to home (via cars, public transit, assistants, etc) vs a company like Amazon that connects warehousing, grocers, and delivery. Big box stores full of employees without a shred of product knowledge make less sense if people are no longer commuting by personal transport for basic goods because it's cheaper and easier to tap into a delivery network for the same thing. The years when oil was super expensive, economists noted how much less people were shopping (before online shopping was ubiquitous).

It's already been uneconomical for a while now for most businesses to host the same bits their employees flip and/or related software in the same place as the employees (doesn't matter if you're writing software or ticking order-completed boxes after attaching printed shipping labels). The world is inherently more decentralized today than decades prior.

Perhaps if insurance companies would get on board full it could help along with some sort of broker service to help quickly offload the car would help.

If that's your goal, you instead "convince them" to live in different places and work at different jobs. The commute follows from that.

People don't 'choose' to get the train in to their office block in London. They use it because they deliberately chose their home and job within those constraints.

If they live a few miles from the station, they might cycle or drive to the station and go from there. This is again dictated by their home situation, it's not a choice in the immediate sense.

Next time I end up in London I'm thinking of renting a flat within walking (or 10 minute cycle) distance of wherever I end up working. The commute was essentially dictated when I made that decision.

If I sign a 12 month lease or buy a place further out then I'd have decided a different commute for myself, at that time, for the next ~year.

Outside of highly built up areas (where things are within walking distance or it is economically feasible to have fast frequent public transportation between high density housing and high density office space), driving is simply a better option.

Trains, buses, bicycles, etc. are not or should not be goals in themselves. Using fossil fuel for manufacturing and not vehicle fuel is not the goal in itself. Less CO2 (or other pollution/resource use) is the goal, so tax all fossil fuel and let markets figure out what is efficient.

And if you think expensive gas is harsh on the poor, address that separately a la basic income proposals.

This all is quite impractical, so people will just go on searching for the keys they dropped in the sewer under the lamppost where they can see.

Driving today takes me 12 minutes, 16 if I time it poorly with the rush.

By bike is 30 minutes and I typically do it for a week once a year (I didn't this year as I carpooled). Once I'm there I need to shower, however I cannot leave anything (no lockers).

Instead of expecting the employees to fix things themselves, why not hire some busses and pick the employees up?

It is expensive to do so, but nicer commutes often correlate strongly with lower turnover. There is a reason Facebook, Google, and the like pay for it.

If I want to go by car it's at least 1,5 hours,longer during rush hour, for the 80km. And it's also much more expensive, especially parking in the city center.

Basically it's designed to carpool small distances where the driver can pick up passengers on his way to work. It might be a little bit difficult to set up for users, but there is a lot of potential to save money with this.

As I pointed out in another comment: End all subsidies to all transportation modes.

Simple, all roads need tolls, all parking should reflect land values usage, end fuel and public transportation subsidies, taxes pollution.

Then people will find the economical and ecological to travel.