The future of commuting

There was once a time when most Americans took streetcars to work every day. Nowadays, 85 percent of workers drive.

And although a few different factors fueled this transition, the biggest one may have been a $425 billion investment over half a century in the world’s most advanced network of highways: the Interstate Highway System.

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

The US spends a ton of money on public transportation. So why is it so terrible?

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Last Wednesday, I had my first experience with microtransit, when I hopped into a black Jeep Patriot that pulled up to a specified spot outside my Washington, DC, office after work. On the way home, I chatted with the driver — a friendly, bearded guy named Dean — until, a few minutes later, he got a notification on a small tablet mounted next to the dashboard.

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Many Americans are obsessed with rooting out things that make us unhealthy — even to the point of overkill. We detox, we avoid gluten, we devise excessively complicated exercise regimes (even though these are all unnecessary).

A few years ago, my grandfather gave up his car.

During the early years of his retirement, he’d been very active, volunteering at the local library and chauffeuring older folks who couldn’t drive themselves. Over time, he slowed down, but remained independent — so much so that after a year or so in a retirement home, he stubbornly moved back into his own apartment. Though he was in his 80s, he didn’t like the idea of being surrounded by — as he put it — “old people.”

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

For six months a year, average daily highs in Copenhagen fail to crack 50°F and the sky is cloudy most of the time. It’s not necessarily weather that makes you want to head outside and jump on your bike.

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Back in February, the Detroit Free Press detailed the plight of James Robertson, a 56-year-old Detroit man who worked at a suburban injection mold factory. He rode buses for 2.5 hours to and from work, but limited service left him no option but walking another 21 miles round-trip daily.

For people who are constantly stuck in traffic jams during their commutes, there seems to be an obvious solution: just widen the roads.

This makes intuitive sense. Building new lanes (or new highways entirely) adds capacity to road systems. And traffic, at its root, is a volume problem — there are too many cars trying to use not enough road.

This article is part of a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Bike share is one of the hottest trends in US transportation, with new systems springing up across the country over the past decade.

Commuting sucks. But it doesn’t suck equally for everyone.

You might assume that the length of your commute is the main thing that affects how pleasant or nightmarish it is. But a number of studies show that the mode of transportation you take is also really important — both in terms of how happy (or unhappy) you are with your commute, and your overall chance of obesity.

This post is part of a series on the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Back in the 1920s, most American city-dwellers took public transportation to work every day.

This post is part of a series on the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

The technology that most profoundly changes US commuting might not be the self-driving car.

This post is part of a series on the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

Recently, there has been a big change in US transportation: young people are driving fewer miles than their parents.

This is the first article in a series about the past, present, and future of commuting in America.

In small pockets of large cities around America, a growing number of people have been walking, biking, or taking public transit to work in recent years. A disproportionate focus on these cities has led advocates and journalists to celebrate the resurgence of car-free forms of transportation.

The average American spends 51 minutes traveling to and from work, each and every day.

Most of us think of our commute as something we just need to get through as quickly as possible and banish from our minds once it’s over. That’s fair enough. After all, commuting sucks. Excessively long commutes have been linked to problems such as obesity, neck and back problems, and sleep troubles.