The Imminent Commuting Revolution

How long is your commute? If you’re an average American, it’s about 26 minutes. While a few work from home, and our increasingly technological society suggests that number could grow and thus shrink the average, the overall trend has been moving in the other direction pretty steadily since the government started tracking it in 1980. Moreso, the average doesn’t truly reflect the wide range of travel times we tolerate, and some of us are willing to deal with 90 minute travel times for our jobs and careers.

It’s worth noting that length of commute is measured in time, not distance. Most of us, I suspect, are less interested in how many miles we travel than in how long it takes us to travel those miles. However, the number of jobs available to us is a function of distance. Expand the radius of a circle and the area expands exponentially. Thus, if you could travel 30 miles in your acceptable commute time rather than 15, you can expect to have a far greater range of job options.

In uncertain economic times, having more available options increases your probability of finding a job that better suits your skills, and thus gives you a shot at higher earnings and a better career path. It also enables you to make lifestyle choices that better suit your personal goals and happiness. You can choose a place to live that better suits you if your commuting radius is physically larger.

Politicians and bureaucrats, also known as public servants, should serve the public by doing everything they can to improve commuting radius. Practically speaking, this means making streets and roads work better, and in high-density areas where public transportation is economically viable, maximizing the efficiency of trains and buses. These two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, our commuting radii are most maximized when both roads and public transportation systems are made more efficient.

The unfortunate reality is, however, that politicians and bureaucrats don’t want our options maximized. Instead, they want to manage and control our options in a fashion that suits their preferences. Thus, we see in places like New York City relatively little effort in making road travel better, and in some cases, deliberately making road travel worse, in attempts to disincentivize driving. Some will argue, of course, that it’s better for everyone if more people take public transportation, but the fixed nature of trains and subways (since buses share the roads, they’re adversely impacted by bad road conditions) puts its own restrictions on commuting radius. In other words, and as expected, government doesn’t work to serve the public so much as manipulate it.

Lest I be accused of disparaging public transportation, there are benefits to letting someone else do the work. Just as 30 minutes at highway speed isn’t as taxing as 30 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, for many, 45 minutes on a train may be less taxing than 30 minutes in a car. In other words, if you don’t have to work as hard during your commute, you might be just fine with a longer one. On a train, you can read, listen to a podcast, or simply doze off. All other things being equal, I suspect most of us would trade 20 minutes of high-traffic driving for 30 minutes of easy driving and for 45 minutes or more of non-driving. We have greater commuting time tolerance if the commute is easier.

All other things, of course, are not equal. The downsides to public transportation, in comparison to driving yourself, include having to travel to and from the stations, and having to work around train and bus schedules. If you’re living in an urban center already, this may not be a big deal to you, but your commuting radius remains physically small. If you want to avail yourself of a larger commuting radius (e.g. live in the suburbs so your kids can have green spaces and go to a school of your choice), you have to factor in travel time to the station and give yourself some margin of error should you encounter delays in that travel. Thus, even if you can normally get to the station in 5 minutes, you might allocate 10. Again, this impacts your commuting radius.

Enter the disruptive economy. In particular, contemplate self-driving cars. By some accounts, we’ll be seeing them in the marketplace in just a few years, and while Luddites and armchair doomsayers want to scoff at the idea, they’re inevitable.

Imagine the combination of increased time tolerance that public transportation offers with the door-to-door simplicity and flexibility that driving offers. Imagine getting into your car, itself possibly in a warm garage, opening a newspaper or book, or simply dozing off, and finding yourself at your job’s front door some time later. How much extra commuting time would you tolerate thus?

And, of course, that extra commuting time increases your commuting radius, and thus your job and career prospects. Expand that across the entire workforce, and more people will find jobs that fit them better. Productivity will improve, more wealth will be created, people’s real incomes will increase, and our lives will be made better. Self-driving cars are engines of liberty, productivity and happiness.

Naturally, this deeply offends some people. Increased commuting radius exacerbates urban sprawl. Greater use of cars will diminish the ranks of public transportation users, driving per-commuter costs up. More cars on the road will burden infrastructure. Urban planners will have less power to manage people’s lives. Politicians will have less power to control people’s behaviors.

If we take it a step further, if we envision a time where self-driving cars can simply be ordered up on demand (which would, indeed, be a far more efficient use than today’s reality of cars sitting idle 90+% of their existence), we witness even more disruption. Fewer cars need be built. Fewer taxi drivers will be needed. Fewer bus drivers, subway conductors/motormen and the like will be needed. Sure, these jobs “disappear,” but such is the natural reality of progress. Ice trucks, buggy whip makers and steno pools have all gone the way of the dodo bird, but we don’t see legions of unemployed from those job obsolescences. New jobs, new careers, and new skills come into play – all with the same up-side: Greater productivity leads to higher living standards.

Self-driving cars have the potential to make as big an impact on our lives as smart phones have, and they’re just around the corner. They’re an idea born out of liberty, an idea that contributes to liberty, and an idea that fundamentally challenges the traditional enemies of liberty. As such, they’ll be resisted tooth-and-claw by those enemies, and since those enemies have a lot of power and control, the benefits of self-driving cars will be delayed and impeded. Yet, as always, market forces will prevail, and as we begin to reap the benefits, we will demand our politicians and bureaucrats subordinate their will to ours. We should demand that politicians and bureaucrats invest their efforts in facilitating self-driving cars, not in impeding them. Better-managed roads and better-maintained infrastructure are what’s called for, not massive rail boondoggles.

There are certain rights and liberties that are considered so fundamental, the Founding Fathers felt no need to grant them enumerated protection in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Among these is the freedom to move about as we wish. And, as with all freedoms, we have the inherent right to pursue ways to maximize our freedom to move about. Self-driving cars will be a great leap forward in our liberty, and we should demand that liberty’s enemies get out of the way.

We live in an extraordinary age. — Carl Sagan