In 1974, Ivan Illich wrote that the typical American male spent 25% of his waking life either driving a car or working for the income required to pay for one. 50 years later, is this true? And, which cities consume the most – and least – of our time with driving?
YT;DW:CityNerd calculated the average roundtrip commute time of an average person multiplied by the percentage of people who commute driving alone for a selection of cities from the American Community Census. Then separately calculated the number of hours it would take for an average earner in that city to earn enough to pay for the fixed and variable (based on the commute time) costs of car ownership. Adding those two together gives you how long a person has to work to be able to use their car for work and what % that is of their waking life. Using this measure which isn’t perfect and on the conservative side, your average American car commuter spends about 3h a day commuting or working to pay off the commute, which is 19% of the 16h you are awake. Most on the worst list were car-heavy suburbs of a major metro area like Chicago, Southern Florida, near DC where the incomes in the local area aren’t high. Ranged from 23-27%. Suburbs of LA in SoCal were the highest, Perris CA made the top of the worst. Puerto Rico was higher due to poor income and high driving rates due to poor transit. The best were very high or higher income areas where commute times are low and transit usage is high, Mountain View CA, Seattle and Bellvue WA, SF, DC, Boulder CO, Redmond WA, Berkeley CA. Cambridge MA is the top at 7.4% of waking life.
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