People spend 78 minutes in commute daily, global study estimates

New Delhi, Nov 14 (PTI) Populations around the world tend to commute for nearly 78 minutes a day -- an hour and 18 minutes -- regardless of the country they live in or how rich they might be, a new analysis of data from 43 countries has estimated.

On average, between 66 and 90 minutes are spent everyday commuting, irrespective of the mode of transport or the distance covered.

The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, looked at data related to personal and work-related travel, representing that of more than half of the world's population.

The estimated "convergent" range of daily travel time also does not depend on whether people are walking, biking, or driving, and appears to come from deep-rooted psychological desires to see the surroundings, combined with practical limits that prevent people from spending too much time travelling, researchers said.

"The most important finding is that people don't travel less when speed or efficiency increases; instead, they travel farther," author Eric Galbraith, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Spain, said.

The findings suggest that energy consumed every hour of travel -- rather than per kilometre travelled -- is the real factor that will determine future energy consumption.

They added that the key to reducing energy consumption at the population-level lies in designing communities that encourage low rates of energy use during those 78 minutes of daily travel.

"Since total travel time is nearly constant, policies that enable people to choose low-energy-per-hour modes of transport will be the most effective for reducing transport energy demand," co-author William Fajzel, a PhD student at Canada's McGill University, said.

The authors found that "total travel time among 43 countries converges to (1.3 hours or 78 minutes per day, with a variability of 0.2 hours or 12 minutes) and is invariant with per capita income across two orders of magnitude".

The researchers said the convergent value of time spent commuting provides a robust tool for predicting how societies might respond to technological changes or public transport policies, despite involving complex behavioural changes.

An individual's behavioural changes will end up altering how the total commute time is distributed among different modes of transport -- and with it, energy expenditure, the team said.

For example, they explained, a city organised around light rail, where each person spends about 40 minutes a day on the train and walks the rest of the time, will predictably consume about five times more energy than a city where all travel is on foot. PTI KRS KRS MAH MAH