So, how many hours in your life is spent in transit?
Some people choose to commute from far away such as this London chap commuting from Barcelona.
The goal should be to live in places where you can reduce commute. However, due to different circumstances, people either choose to or end up having to live quite far from where they work, study or spend most of their days at. Factors that contribute to such may include:
- House Prices
- Living Spaces that can be afforded close to work
- Community in which they live in (family, religion, friends, cultural)
The time I have spent in commuting in my life from Sunnybank Hills, discounting any commuting time before starting primary school:
- Primary School (1.5 hour per day, 180 hours per year) (Upper Mt Gravatt)
- Morning 7:30 to 8:00
- Afternoon 15:00 to 16:00
- Secondary School (3.75 hours per day, 675 hours per year) (Spring Hill)
- Morning 7:00 to 8:30
- Afternoon 15:00 to 17:15
- University (2.5 hours per day, 450 hours per year) (St Lucia, Ipswich)
- Working life (2.2 hours per day, 510.4 hours per year) (Brisbane CBD)
- Morning 7:50 to 9:00
- Afternoon 17:00 to 18:00
This adds up to 9452.4 hours, roughly equates 393.85 days on sitting down and nothing nothing.
A full years time that could be used for sports, sleep, studying or doing enjoyable things.
That only accounts for myself and not my twin, which is equivalent to over two years of wastage in our lives.
My parents have relocated from an inner city suburb of Quarry Bay to Sai Kung, intending for a better lifestyle for their retirement. However, this has resulted in my mother retiring due to the public transit commute required to get to work, and my father & brother driving long distances everyday to get to work. A side effect is the deteriorating health of my mum due to the absence of a Fitness First club in which my mother frequents, reducing her activeness level.
An extract from a Harvard research paper by Glaeser et al (2008) suggests the following:
"London, like New York, has a sizable population of rich residents. The huge time costs involved in commuting, by either car or train, have made proximity attractive in both of those metropolises. Both cities were built around public transportation, not automobiles. The poorest areas of the city, in the East End, directly abut the city center. The richer areas of the West End, such as Mayfair and Piccadilly, are somewhat further removed from the business center of the city, and they neighbor London’s sizable parks. This social geography has remained remarkably unchanged since the Victorian era."
However, it also suggest that newer cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles and Phoenix tend to be built around the automobile and household income increases as follows:
The Ideal Solution
The ideal solution should be to reduce commute while having the benefits of large public spaces and facilities available. This have created the demand for places like West End, where large public parks are abundant close to central business districts. The map below highlights the green areas which fits this criteria.
A characteristic of Brisbane City is that there is no large parks within 5km of the CBD comparable to with New York's Central Park or London's Hyde Park. The Parks in Brisbane include:
My parents have relocated from an inner city suburb of Quarry Bay to Sai Kung, intending for a better lifestyle for their retirement. However, this has resulted in my mother retiring due to the public transit commute required to get to work, and my father & brother driving long distances everyday to get to work. A side effect is the deteriorating health of my mum due to the absence of a Fitness First club in which my mother frequents, reducing her activeness level.
An extract from a Harvard research paper by Glaeser et al (2008) suggests the following:
"London, like New York, has a sizable population of rich residents. The huge time costs involved in commuting, by either car or train, have made proximity attractive in both of those metropolises. Both cities were built around public transportation, not automobiles. The poorest areas of the city, in the East End, directly abut the city center. The richer areas of the West End, such as Mayfair and Piccadilly, are somewhat further removed from the business center of the city, and they neighbor London’s sizable parks. This social geography has remained remarkably unchanged since the Victorian era."
However, it also suggest that newer cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles and Phoenix tend to be built around the automobile and household income increases as follows:
Given our experience of the ability to scale up of highways and road networks, it is not practical to say that automobile have negated the effects of distance once demand starts to develop causing traffic jams, it is not a solution for high density commute. Brisbane's town planning is a combination of new and old, with the CBD and northern suburbs planned like London, and the southern suburbs and outer suburbs planned with highways and cars in mind.
The Ideal Solution
The ideal solution should be to reduce commute while having the benefits of large public spaces and facilities available. This have created the demand for places like West End, where large public parks are abundant close to central business districts. The map below highlights the green areas which fits this criteria.
A characteristic of Brisbane City is that there is no large parks within 5km of the CBD comparable to with New York's Central Park or London's Hyde Park. The Parks in Brisbane include:
- City Botanical Gardens
- Roma Street Parklands
- South Bank Parklands
- New Farm Park
- Victoria Park
- Davies Park
- Captain Burke Park (Kangaroo Point)
Affordability around these areas tend to increase over time as traffic around the CBD gets worse. Unit & House prices around the CBD is illustrated below:
The Future
The emergence of newer transportation technologies such as high speed rail and driverless cars can have an impact on the dynamics of property prices, as it can free up the commute time for other activities. However, it still does not negate the fact that time is being used for commuting, and road capacity is very difficult to increase around built up areas.
Remote working technologies are increasingly able to allow workers to work remotely from home without travelling. This greatly reduces the commute time to up to 60%, as it would take a fundamental cultural change for management allow workers working 100% remotely.
In conclusion, there is no question on the value of living closer to places where you will be most active in, as the reduction in travelling and commuting times is vital to using the most of the finite time we have. Cities such as London, Singapore, Hong Kong are evidence of good quality landed properties close to the CBD with good public facilities will be the most treasured and valued, as they bring the most benefit to the occupants.
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