Maybe you happen to be on a route that runs well from home to work without lots of stops and no need to change lines. Can you find a destination in your city that would require a change of bus or train and incur a larger time penalty? What if your job was located there instead?
I think most people buy sensible vehicles but there are certainly people who have a truck fetish that is not justified. Unfortunately it creates an arms race where all cars get larger because there are very real risks of a collision with a larger vehicle.
I do. But I still live in the south, and my work is outside the city, to the north west of it, to be exact.
The average is 40 minutes commute time (for my city). So I’m already quite a bit off.
And yes, of course, if I lived in the south east of the city it would take me 1,5 hours at least by public transport. 40-60 minutes by car on average. But I wouldn’t move there, as that is too far off.
But most of these other possible places would mean, that I would most probably also always have to drive through the city center or take a big detour outside of it. Both possibilities aren’t actually preferable. So again I wouldn’t live there and at the same time work at the same company.
I just need to look at one of my brothers. Lives relatively close to the center but still a bit south of it. Could take 2 subways in 30 minutes (including walking) but still decides to take the car most days where he has to drive through heavy traffic, that takes him at least the same amount of time.
So no, a lot of people aren’t that sensible. They just do what they are used to and often enough even vehemently go against even the possibility of changing that with weird as excuses (smells terrible weird people, always packed, always delayed etc.) Which for most times of day and most routes just isn’t true.
Just take a look at the available cars nowadays. You can barely even buy a smal car, as those aren’t even produced in such a variety anymore. Because 1. People keep buying the big SUVs, and 2. Manufacturers can make way more money with those than with small cars.
Hell, in Germany they are actively debating making parking spots bigger, because the cars keep getting bigger (btw look at carsized they have a great visualization for this), instead of simply reglementaing how big cars can get, before they are either forbidden or so heavily taxed that it’s just not worth to buy something large.
