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Considering that each time you are driving your it costs money to you and the society and reduce your health and life expectancy unless you exercise separately, that cycling and walking improve your life expectancy while saving money to both you and the society, and that a 12 minutes drive can't be much more than a 40 minutes bicycle ride, my bet is that riding to work would be a better option for both you and the society as it would save everyone money[1] and time while improving everyone general health and life expectancy.

[1] combining exercising + commuting will make you gain time over commuting faster + exercising separately in that kind of distances.

I'm genuinely curious how much doing heavy aerobic exercise (cycling) right next to a road with a bunch of cars affects my life expectancy. Especially since we're starting to discover that things like the tire dust from car tires wearing down while driving also has a huge impact on areas near roads.

I know a singer that avoids doing any heavy exercise near major roads because it affects their performance after even just after a short exposure.

> I can drive to work in twelve minutes.

Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes. The difference would be that cycling infrastructure is dirt cheap, bikes are dirt cheap, you can fit way more bikes on a path than cars, you get daily physical exercise - longer lifespan, emit trivial amounts of pollution and parking is a non-issue.

> Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes.

Unless, you know, there's no way to actually cycle there in 20 minutes because the routes are not cyclist friendly or accessible. Or maybe they live in a hilly area where cycling means either working up quite a sweat, or getting an e-bike to assist. Or there's inclement weather that makes cycling extremely uncomfortable if not impossible. Or if you have an injury that makes cycling difficult or painful to where you can only go very slow. Or when you have to carry something heavy with you.

There was a point where I had a 15 minute commute to work by car. Cycling, it was 40 minutes and required getting pretty sweaty. Why? Because by car I could take the highway, and by bike I couldn't. Cycling was also much more dangerous on that route than the highway drive, because I had to go through many intersections, pass multiple schools during the morning drop-off time, cross over a major highway overpass that always had heavy traffic that time of day.

If you can drive in 12 minutes surely the walk itself isn't that long. Public transport is never going to be able to compete over a short distance.

I used to commute 1.5 hours each way on the train from Wollongong to Sydney. The alternative drive takes the same or longer, depending on traffic. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this trip every day (and the equivalent from Newcastle).

Another period of my life was living in Brunswick (MEL) and working in Richmond (MEL). Drive 40 mins to 1 hour, train including 5-6 min walk at both ends 44 mins. I can read on the train though.

Every situation is going to be different. When the public transport is as bad as most US cities I'm not surprised that people don't want to take it, but with European/UK and Australian public transport you're almost certainly better off commuting that way (excluding things like carrying goods, or mobility issues).

>If you can drive in 12 minutes surely the walk itself isn't that long.

I just checked this with google maps. In 12 minutes i can get 10 km from my house. That's a 2 hour walk.

It's maybe 20-30 minutes of bicycling, depending on roads.

It highly depends I guess. A 12 minute drive in peak hour in Melbourne on one of the walks I used to take was about 50 minutes of walking. At a different time of day, about 1hr and 50 mins of distance (using Google Maps to find examples).

Granted an hour of walking each way isn't necessarily doable. But that same track can be done in about 25 mins on a bike, probably less on an e-bike.

Lol it's 9 miles. The anti-car motte is "just put a little bit more funding into buses and it'll be great", but the indefensible subtext is that we also need to abandon our homes, our present communities, and get relocated into high density urban zones.

I've been there, done that. I used to commute from Philly to Radnor on SEPTA's regional rail. I like trains but the amount of time I burned every day on the train, let alone walking back and forth to the stations, was simply a waste of my life. Reading on the train is great and all but I'd rather have that free time at home.

If you're outside a city and hopping on a freeway, you're obviously not going to be able to walk that.

I would never recommend more buses - buses suck. Trains and trams though, are great.

I'll also take European and Australian communities over the parking lots that are American communities any day of the week. I'll also take the high-speed rail between London and Paris (and a host of other EU/UK examples) rather than driving.

Europe is absolutely an example of how you don't have to have a terrible experience if you have good public transport. London by train is ~2.5 hours, and by car it's 5-6 hours at a minimum.

So I'm a 7 minute drive to the nearest commuter rail station, but that's using an interstate. Google tells me it would be a 2 hour walk which included a section of dark country road without sidewalks and at least one set of interstate ramp crossings. So not practical. (I do drive to the train station and take the train into the city if I have a 9-5 type customer meeting.)

Yeah, I made the mistake of not quantifying that my comment was very city based where you can sit in traffic for 10 minutes and move nowhere. It's also based on the experience in Europe where the public transport, particularly in Western Europe is insanely good.

It's rare I would consider driving my own car for 12 minutes in a city (would probably take twice that again to find parking) and I would normally not take an Uber unless I had a heavy load, was in a rush, etc.

There is a small regional small bus system that serves the train station and the Walmart about a mile away. No idea of the schedule--I'm sure it doesn't run late. But I'd still be taking my life in my hands to walk the mile to the Walmart.

Public transportation cannot compete over long distances either as they stop dropping people off anywhere close to home once you leave the city. They are only able to complete within a city at medium range where they special lanes.

It can, when cities are not built with dumb land use patterns.

I am moving to an apartment 50km away from my workplace. Commuting by car or by train will take around the same time (~50 min door-to-door), but the car will be subject to random traffic, hunting for parking spot, stress, etc. Oh, and the train is several times cheaper.

This comment is out of touch just based on the first sentence. The US is a continent spanning nation and half the country does not live in a city.

> The US is a continent spanning nation

How is that relevant? No one commutes from NY to LA everyday, much as no one commutes from Berlin to Munich everyday.

> and half the country does not live in a city

Yes, and that's what I mean by "dumb land-use patterns". That people living in suburbs are not technically within a city's boundaries is a distinction without a difference. Land is wasted to highways and parking lots no one can cross without a two-ton machine, useless lawns no one really has time to enjoy or maintain, dumb McMansions that cost and arm and a leg and so on.

And all of that is subsidised in what is effectively a [pyramid scheme]<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI>.

Fine, you drive between London and Paris, but I'm going to catch the Eurostar (tube and metro). You drive between New York and SF, but I'm going to fly.

I'm not recommending buses, buses suck. European public transport is amazing and the US could learn something.

Im talking more going from Chicago to small town central Illinois. You’re biased and assuming everyone who travels lives in, leaves from and arrives at a city. You assume everything else is fly over country instead of most of the countries land and half its population.

And you're biased in thinking everything has bad public transport like the US. I could use an absolute bucket load of examples from UK, Europe and Australia where to drive long distance you will always come off second to public transport of one form or another.

Europe and the UK has an absolutely extensive train network, not just big cities. I could have as easily said Ancona to Bologna, or Strasbourg to Stuttgart. You're just unlikely to know anything about those places. Or even smaller stations/towns -- Hinkley or Inverness.

Australia's regional towns are primarily linked by regional airlines, the drives are insanely long to get to the nearest city. People do, of course, but flying is always going to be quicker.

That escalated quickly.

Indeed, the lizard people are already marching across the flat earth I guess. They'll be here for us soon.