85 billion hours a year

I recently discovered that a childhood friend moved his family from upper north to the center of Israel. It made our social get togethers somewhat easier to schedule which is awesome. On the flip side, he now spends 60 minutes commuting to work - in each direction - daily. His wife spends about 80 minutes commuting each direction.

That's 2 hours per day for one person, which translates into 40 hours a month and 480 hours a year! That's the equivalent of a 3 months work for an FTE, spent on the road. 2 hours a day for 6 months is what you need to do an Ironman btw.

A decade ago I took a deliberate decision - after having to commute to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during my BA - that I want to live within a walking distance to work and all day-to-day necessary facilities to be more productive and have a better quality of life.

Israel is a tiny country from a geographical standpoint, and the commute metric by my childhood friend got me intrigued. Especially since I did not own a car - ever in my life - until earlier this year, at the age of 37.

Interesting facts that got me thinking:

1/ In the US alone, American drivers (240M registered drivers) spend 85 billion hours a year on the road (Uber, busses, tracks etc excluded). It's a staggering amount of time, and somewhat of an underestimation since sampling data was collected end of 2022, post pandemic.

2/ The vast majority of driving time - approx. 60 billion hours - is spent alone behind the wheel. It sounds reasonable if you incorrectly assume that most driving time is dedicated to commute. It's actually social & recreational - 27%.

3/ The number of vehicles per household almost doubled over the last 50 years. One might even argue that the vehicles are a commodity market since 9 out of 10 households in the US own at least 1 vehicle. Pretty astonishing for me tbh.

4/ Globally ppl spend 76 minutes a day commuting to work, with South Korea being the global leader in daily commute time - 110 minutes. Did not expect that.

5/ At the beginning of the 20th century, the US used to be a global leader in electric streetcar and urban rail technology, moving millions of citizens across and within all major cities. GM delivered a fatal blow on top of the 5 cents fare - buying the transit companies and shutting them down (in a nutshell).

Car ownership is the ultimate tech-debt and autonomous vehicles are not going to give Americans their 85 billion hours back.