Leaving Early May Cost You Time 678
markmcb writes "OmniNerd has an interesting traffic article demonstrating how leaving early for work may cost you time. Brandon Hansen uses a year's worth of data collected on his urban drive to and from work along with statistical analysis to show the effects of varying departure times and considering external factors like nearby school districts' schedules. In the end, a minor shift in his departure time results in saving driving hours equivalent to over a third of the vacation time given annually by his employer."
Leaving Differently (Score:5, Insightful)
However, your employer will always notice if you leave early, so the idea situation is to leave late.
not driving at all better (Score:5, Insightful)
with the price of fuel and maintenance, and time with kids that wont be kids long, it was worth it to really make an effort.
Re:What rush hour? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:80 hours vacation? (Score:3, Insightful)
After ten years at one of the companies I worked for, I would have gotten double the leave/year. Heck, right now I get a whole month a year, plus bank holidays.
Like many things in america, there are published 'minimums' in many states, but that doesn't mean that the companies can't offer more if they choose to do so.
Re:80 hours vacation? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of Europeans complain that Americans are sheltered and don't know anything about the rest of the world. And why should we? We're hard pressed to find any time to travel. If you travel for just one week out of an entire year, that leaves you with just five available vacation days to plan for friends' weddings, a visit from family, a camping trip, etc.
Most of us burn our sick days for short-term time off like that, but that's hardly a good solution. Oh wait -- you have heard about the American healthcare system, haven't you?
Companies in the U.S. are fond of management philosophies that emphasize effective "human capital management." Say that ten times fast. Sounds a lot like "human cattle management," doesn't it? Coincidence?
cycling (Score:5, Insightful)
The other plus, is that finding parking for a bicycle is always easy. No more hunting/paying for car parking. My fiance and I both cycle, and this means that we only run one car. A big economic saving. I highly recommend it.
Re:not driving at all better (Score:5, Insightful)
My commute to work is about 30 minutes by bike (plus 5-10 minutes to change clothes) and 20 minutes by car. While I would love to live closer, I can't complain too much. One thing I really love about biking is that I don't have to put up with traffic. Thankfully, the way to and from work is fairly well covered by bike paths. I find driving very frustrating just due to small things like waiting at stop lights and stop signs and getting stuck behind another driver. My biking speed is so slow compared to my driving that the change in speeds for stop signs and lights doesn't feel as frustrating, and I'm never stuck behind anyone.
Re:Choose wisely... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there usually isn't a choice, and no, it's not a situation that is always one's own fault.
Traffic patterns change. Where I live now, in five short years, places that weren't congested before are now locked up tight every single workday. Am I supposed to move every five years? Also, some of us kind of like the idea of being able to someday pay off our house, but we work in an idustry where people shuffle around every six months to a year. (Thank you, outsourcing!) If I moved every time I've changed jobs to be closer to work, I'd be constantly selling and buying houses, a proposition I'm not too fond of.
Plus, there are factors involved in where you live other than just where you work. I have a friend who has lived in the same house for around 20 years. He knows the people in his community, his kids have grown up there and are still in school, and it's where he'll likely live until the day he dies. When he got laid off, he had to take a job that was around half an hour further away, and he's been trying to find something else closer ever since. Is his commute his own fault? I suppose technically, yes, but it doesn't make his situation any less worthy of sympathy.
My point is that while it's true that some people deliberately make informed choices to move far away from their work, in reality, that is rarely the case, and it's no excuse for people to not raise the question, "Is there any way to make the traffic situation better?"
Arriving Early Can Cost Time As Well (sort of) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Choose wisely... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought a house 10 minutes away from where I work. A year and a half later, the company decided to relocate their headquarters to a location that is 25 minutes farther away. It is not really practical to change where you live based on where you are working at any given moment, unless you are renting. And even then...
The math is good, the application is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
What rush hour?-Early to rise, makes an employee. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Doing the math... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about anyone else, but I mock it because it's so obviously unsustainable in the long run. "Free" health care that means waiting endless amounts of time for routine surgeries. A work force that gets so spoiled that they riot in France because they're not given a job for life!
French, German and British workers' productivity per hour worked is way higher than American workers' productivity per hour worked. We earn more money too, for less work.
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
What gives? Why so down on lots of time off and 35 hour working week?
It really comes down to freedom. Most people in the US don't believe in the government coming in and telling everyone how to run their business. A lot of people dream here of owning their own business, and when we imagine that day, we certainly don't want to imagine not being able to fire some slacker anytime we want to.
Sure, there are people who desire the government to establish the "right to slack", but most reasonable people see that it's a bad long-term policy (though that wisdom is getting diluted all the time, sadly).
Your economy is totally fucked and you're about to be overtaken by China (who you're already in hock to for 400 trillion USD)
Yeah, yeah. Every decade it's another country that's going to "overtake" us, whatever that means. Last time it was Japan, with their Government/Business "partnerships". Somehow, the US always manages to come out ahead. You know why? Because we let things fail. We believe in shedding the blood of capitalism and coming out stronger afterward.
Re:What rush hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate cubes.
Route is also important (Score:5, Insightful)
I first started by avoiding the city entirely... hitting 237 to 880 and up. But the milpitas junction was always such a crawl that it took far longer than just driving through the city. Then I took 101 up, which would slow to a predictable crawl and take a very long time. Then I started taking the secret route: 280 up through the foothills. Speeds are always in the 90's and there is never a jam unless someone flipped their porche. It still dumps you out in the city, but you avoid the 101 SF traffic jam.
Going back, that route is a nightmare of drunk drivers and morning traffic. Ironically, coming up 580 to 880 to 237 gets you in at ludicrous speeds... I've been going 110 and getting passed by cops on a fully empty 5-lane road.
A three hour commute chopped down to just one hour by judicious exploration of possible routes.
The same has been true in Boston. I used to drive my girlfriend to work from Porter Square to the Cambridgeside Galleria. After experimenting with Mass Ave, Memorial Drive, and a few other routes, it became clear that the fastest way to get there was by taking Somerville to McGrath Highway... both underutilized throughfares that nobody needs to commute on in the morning. A 1 hour commute chopped down to 1/2 hour.
I guess what I'm saying is experiment with your drive. Every place I've lived, from Boston to LA to the silicon valley, has had alternate routes that (once discovered) chopped commute time down tremendously.
Traffic lights (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunately, I now work at a place that is only about 3.5 miles from where I live, and I can get doorstop-to-doorstop in just over ten minutes and only deal with one traffic light. I'm moving soon, and my commute will be even shorter.
Re:Rule of 13 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doing the math... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to point out that I'm not completely disagreeing. Just the fact that economically I don't believe the US could handle less than 1% annual growth. Our spending habits & saving habits would need to change drastically. I would actually prefer to live in europe. I may be immigrating soon or at least getting a work visa & job.
Ciao!
Re:80 hours vacation? (Score:1, Insightful)
They also pay 35% of the total federal tax revenue.
Wealth disparity has increased over the last 20 years.
The overall standard of living has increased. The average american can afford to buy more goods and services with the same income now than he could 20 years ago and they curse Walmart for offering them what they want at a low price...you just cant win with some people. The equality of distribution is less important than the overall standard of living. If you want equality combined with high unemployment and overpriced goods and services then try France.
The bottom 60% of households hold 4.2% of the wealth despite earning 26.8% of the income.
Because they spend too much of their disposable income rather than saving what they can and taking advantage of opportunities to purchase assets instead of taking on more debt to finance depreciating liabilities like that Disney vacation or that new flat panel television.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doing the math... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see:
US has highest health care costs in the world, yet quality is not among the top 20 industrialized countries. (CNN...YESTERDAY!) Life expectancy trails a similar number of the same countries and even Cuba!
US does have among the highest production per worker, but NOT per worker per hour. Diminishing returns and all that. (Economist 11/05)
US vacation time and real compensation have been shrinking since the 60s with a few temporary exceptions.
Retirement age continues to increase, while retirement benefits decrease.
Minimum wages have not been raised in more than a decade (check how many times congress has voted themselves raises in the same period....)
Have you read a single article about the French riots? The issue centers on the fact that the revised labor laws basically allow the majority of young workers to basically be fired without cause up to age 27 anytime somebody younger (=cheaper) comes along.
"Most people in the US don't believe in the government coming in and telling everyone how to run their business." BWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!! Stop it, you're killing me!
I don't understand the mentality that says working a bit less and enjoying more vacation and retirement are bad things. Do you really have that little meaning in your life outside of the office? I'm truly sorry if you do.
With every passing decade, capitalism looks more and more like slavery, and I NEVER thought I would say that.
Re:Doing the math... QWZX (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm with you there.
without social security (which is screwed up) for a reasonable comparison of federal government services
Uh, sorry, you lost me. How can you ignore social security??? It's over 7% out of your paycheck, for Christ's sake! If "it's screwed up" is a valid reason for ignoring a tax, then let's just ignore federal taxes too because they're "screwed up" too. I'm with you on ignoring the employer's portion of FICA, because that doesn't really come directly out of my pocket, but ignoring the employee's portion is just horse hockey.
Second of all, look at the federal government
That's why they list the AVERAGE tax rate. And as an aside, there are only seven states in the U.S. that levy no income tax, and another 2 that don't tax wage income. So that leaves 41 states that have their hand out for your hard-earned. Given that half of the 9 lucky states are quite small population-wise, that means the vast majority of Americans (over 80%, by my quick calculations) live in states with an income tax.
One big problem of the GP's table is that as far as I can tell it ignores sales tax or VAT or whatever you want to call it. So Canada's tax rate may look low, but their combined PST/GST is around 15% depending on the province. It also seems to ignore property taxes, local income tax (NYC charges income tax on top of what the feds and the state want), and any other tax you can come up with. In other words you'd be stupid to do anything useful with it.
Re:80 hours vacation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.
Wow.
You TOTALLY missed the point.
The "poor people" you're talking about... I don't know how to break this to you, but they don't HAVE 200k mortgages. They tend to not even own. (Since owning takes capital.) They don't HAVE DVDs. They can afford the INTEREST on their loans, if they're lucky. And where do they get these loans? It's not from flat panel TV purchases. It's from things like medical problems when you don't have insurance. Whoops, you got sick? That's gonna cost you. And of course, it will cost you even more, since if you don't have insurance, you don't go in unless it's REALLY BAD (since you know it will cost you) so preventative medicine doesn't really happen much...
The problem isn't that "poor people don't know how to save". The problem is that the people that set the minimum wage don't seem to think that working at a job full time should at least earn you enough money to purchase both food AND shelter.
Step away from your OWN flat panel TV and DVD rack long enough to go look outside your window for a moment. See that? That's the "real world". And it extends a bit beyond the middle-class suburban skyline that no doubt graces your view.
The view "Poor people are there because they are lazy/don't want to work/lack motivation/can't plan well" is almost always exclusively found in.. wait for it... people who AREN'T POOR. Try it yourself sometime before you make broad, sweeping, generalizations.
Re:Wealth is irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)
Taxes are part of that expenditure. Payroll taxes do not affect those with large incomes nearly the way they affect those with smaller incomes. For one thing, payroll taxes only affect wages. They do not affect capital gains and dividends.
Income taxes are progressive, but sales and property taxes are not. Sales tax is assessed in proportion to consumption, not in proportion to income or wealth. Thus, sales taxes tend to be regressive, as those with less income spend a greater proportion of their income on basic necessities. Property taxes are a bit more complicated: They tend to hit folks in the middle. Poorer folks tend to rent, and pay property tax indirectly through rent. That tax is amortized over all the renters and so tends to hit each individual less. The folks in the middle buy houses and get hit with property tax directly. As your wealth grows, typically the value of your property grows sublinearly. I know if my income doubled, I would not buy a house that cost twice as much.
So, there's two impacts here:
That threshold isn't a fixed number, but rather flexible depending on the spending habits of individuals. I agree: Most people don't save enough, and push that threshold higher than it should be. But it's a very real fact that there is a threshold above which only truly reckless spending would cause you not to accumulate wealth. (And, well, that happens often enough if you look for washed up celebrities....)
Personally, I think many of the recent tax reforms are rather bogus... they tend to tilt the overall tax burden further toward the lower ranks, pushing the investment (and thus, wealth accumulation) threshold further up. Cecil Adams [straightdope.com] did a thoughtful analysis of Reagan's tax reforms. I'd love to see him do an update relative to Bush's reforms. Hint: Us middle class wage earners don't earn the bulk of our income from dividends. I bet you can guess who does, though.
I'm in favor of progressive taxation, not because "Oh, the rich guy can better afford it." Rather, the putative "rich guy" benefits more from the infrastructure, stability and social investment the government performs than the average individual. Roadways, public works, stable financial markets (overseen by the SEC), etc. Those don't directly impact the "little guy," except to cause the movers and shakers to decide where they do business, and how much business they choose to conduct. It's those with capital that reap the most direct benefits, and so they owe something back to the system that allows them to accumulate and control that wealth. It's only fair.
What if we went to a pure "wealth tax"?
--JoeNeat, and agrees with my rough observations (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Friday mornings are usually pretty smooth. Mondays are often smooth too.
2) Evenings are always terrible. It doesn't matter the day of the week, they're just consistently awful.
3) Days/weeks without school are lighter.
4) Leaving at 8:40 gives a pretty consistent 30 minute commute. Leaving an hour earlier guarantees bad traffic.
The author did miss one key point though, which I call the Nielson Law of Traffic Dynamics (named for my carpool buddy who discovered it):
Traffic on the evening of October 31st is unquestionably always the worst traffic of the year, every year.
Every year we forget about this law, and every year we curse the thousands of parents who *have* *to* *be* *home* *before* *sunset*.
Neil
Re:Doing the math... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for understanding why anybody would need six weeks of vacation time, I'd love it. Right now I have three. I usually take a two-week vacation with my gf in the summer, and then a week backpacking somewhere. That doesn't leave me any vacation to just take a day off because it's nice out, or anything like that. Sure you could tell me not to take the two weeks straight, but a day off here and there without an extended break from work doesn't have the same effect. If I had an extra couple weeks, I could take the long vacation and still take those days off when I want to.
Bottom line, I enjoy my work, but I enjoy my free time more. And I wish I had more of it. I'm not alone in this, either -- in the 2005 ComputerWorld Salary Survey, tops on the list of things people wished their company offered was more time off, at 42% of the respondents. 36% said more vacation time would influence them to switch jobs, while 45% said a "better work/life balance" would, which sounds a lot like working less to me.
Re:LIVING Differently (Score:3, Insightful)
Kids are lots better off with fenced backyards (sandbox, garden, treehouse...) and quiet dead-end streets.
Nobody needs a lawn, though it can be useful for sports. Plant your yard with trees.
Re:80 hours vacation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, shouldn't people be taxed on their ability to pay? Those that are the most wealthy are the ones most able to pay.
Can he really count? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leaving Differently (Score:5, Insightful)
One simple reason is they have to keep changing lanes to keep this up (at least that seems to be thier thinking) and eventually get stuck behind the guy going 20 under and CANT go around him without getting nailed by everyone else driving at a normal speed.
I put about 40-50k miles (65000+KM) a year on the road and see these idiots all the time. They run up at +20kph till thier 1/2 car length or less behind someone, who of course slows down (would you rather get in an accident at high speeds or lower speeds?) and spend forever behind the guy they are tailgating. Since they often have just switched to that lane because the other lane was marginally slower at the moment they are now locked behind two cars untill the person thier behind slows enough they think switching lanes AGAIN will help, only to repeat the same mistake of tailgating so bad the other guy slows down.
The fastest way is to get the lane that typically goes fastest on average and stay there at a reasonable distance till you get where your going. This of course assumes you've planned your route out intelligently and left with plenty of time, fail those and you might as well sit in the slow lane behind the 95 year old who thinks 45mph is scary.
It's not going faster that gets you there quicker, it's avoiding the delays, and speeding is more likely to cause a delay. (as above, getting pulled over, getting in a wreck, missing your turn because you tried to go around the 'slowpoke' and got shut out of the turn lane, etc.)
Mycroft
Europe isn't one country; bits grow faster than US (Score:3, Insightful)
You're picking your figures to match your argument. Sure, the US economic system grows very quickly compared to some European nations - but others do better. The UK annual growth rate [statistics.gov.uk] for Q4 2005 was 1.8% - faster than the US annual growth rate for Q4 2005 at 1.7%.
I work for a company in their UK HQ, with US offices; I am consistently horrified by the miserly 2/3-week holiday allowance that my US cow-orkers seem to consider "normal". The raw minimum in EU states is 4 weeks and most companies offer nearer 5 weeks for established employees.
The thing is, though, that if the cost of living is cheap enough compared to your net salary, you can afford to take unpaid leave. With the cost of living and taxes being much lower in the US, many more US employees can afford to take unpaid leave than UK employees.
So any argument comparing growth to paid leave doesn't hold water; we aren't comparing apples to apples.
Ditto unemployment. Not only do unemployment rates vary enormously across the EU (mass unemployment in France; hardly any in the UK), but the benefits paid also vary enormously.
Treating the EU as one homogenous mass, just because it's relatively small, densely populated, some bits of it share a single currency and some (different) bits of it share a single border control system, is going to completely kill any statistical argument. You can't pretend that rich countries such as Denmark and the UK are in any way economically similar to poorer nations such as Portugal or Poland. The EU exists to make trade easier and regulations more consistent, not to make the dozens of member countries into one country called Europe.
Re:Leaving Differently (Score:4, Insightful)
Aggressive/stupid does as you desribe. They tend to evaluate lanes greedily, tailgate massively. I think their general assumption is that if they tailgate enough, the person will move. They constantly thrash lanes. They never "drop back and punt" when it's clear that reducing speed, losing 2-3 car lengths, and passing through another lane to get to an empty lane is the right course course of action. (The latter I've seen so many times, and it amuses me
Aggressive/smart people tend to change lanes, but they also tend to watch the overall flow of traffic. I generally don't bother changing lanes once the traffic gets thick enough, but I do keep a watch out for which lanes seem to be better in particular stretches of road. But that sort of lane complacance is something I only do when it's stop and go. When the traffic is thick but moving at highway speeds, I will be much more aggressive. I don't tail, but I do find the clumps of cars moving faster, or I find empty pockets that will get me around slower clumps, etc. I will beat a complacent driver almost every day of the week. Believe me, I've left work for a lunch location the same time as coworkers many times and been several minutes earlier.
Some of the difference here might be what person A and person B consider heavy traffic, though. If the traffic is moving at highway speeds, I don't consider it heavy. There's a "thick and chunky" mode on highways where things are moving, and aggressive drivers can actually make progress there. Stop and go and it's a slightly different matter. (Unless, of course, you're one of those asshats who uses the shoulder as a lane in stop and go traffic. I have no respect for those people. I break speeding laws all the time, but using the shoulder is against "the rules".) You can make gains in stop and go traffic by careful lane choice, but yeah, it's usually marginal, or they're strategic gains by knowing the right overall lanes.
My advice: Get a bike! (Score:4, Insightful)
In a green city like mine (Munich, Germany) it does not only make driving to work fun, its healty, I am just as fast as with a car in a urabn environment and since I own a smart roadster [smart.com] it doesnt make much difference on what I can carry with me.
An additional plus: you can take shortcuts through parks and industrial sites where no car can get through wich cuts the distance even further.
Re:Doing the math... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are not slaves to capitalism. We are slaves to greed. We are one of the most overworked [familiesandwork.org] nations in the world. It is not so much that our employers or our government are demanding this from us. It is that we demand it from ourselves. We want that new boat. We want that bigger house. We want that bigger/better car -- and it better be new! We want that new entertainment center. We want that new computer/flat panel monitor/video card. We want the lifestyle we see our parents having, but instead of working and saving for it over a lifetime, we want it now. We are so driven by our desire for more stuff that we have become enslaved to it -- even to the point of racking up personal debt we can never hope to pay off. It drives every moment of everyday of our lives.
As we scurry around trying to get more stuff, we are missing the very moments and those important relationships that make life on this planet have any meaning. When was the last time you invited someone over for dinner just to hang out? When was the last time you were invited for dinner? When was the last time you visited your neighbor? When was the last time you actually sat down and did nothing but watch a sunrise? Or looked at the stars?
Purhaps this is the inevitable result of capitalism. It relies upon our own greed to drive us to work and succeed, but it also gives us the freedom to make our lives the way we want to. But when one is given greater freedom, one is given greater responsibility. No one is forcing us to work overtime (you have the freedom to pursue another job/career). No one is forcing us to go into debt so we have to work more(you can always say no to that new luxury). While there are exceptions to this (victims of disasters, diseases, etc.), I think most of us would agree that we have placed a lot of our burdens upon ourselves. We don't really need a newer car. We don't really need a bigger house. We don't really need and 60 inch DLP HDTV flat panel television set. We don't really need a new computer (let's face it, a Pentium III will still run most of today's software and it would be better to spend quality time with family and friends than another few hours playing the latest FPS). We buy these things not because we need them, but because we want them. And we overwork ourselves to get them or to pay off the debt we accrued while buying them.
We are the ones who allowed "the system" to destroy us. We are the ones who fell hook-line-and-sinker for the marketing pitches and hype -- who believed in our hearts that newer is always better. We are the ones who felt that we just had to keep with the Joneses or we would -- what? Have less stuff? We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Time shifting (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point of the article is that you can use your time more efficiently if you pay attention to how your commute duration correlates with departure time. When I got my job and moved from another state, I specifically chose where to reside so that my commute would be counter to most of the traffic.
Over the years I've also discovered which routes are clearest during which hours and which months. For example, there are 6-lane roads that are split 4-2 inbound in the morning, 4-2 outbound in the evening, and 3-3 at other times with parking in the outer lanes. If I time my travel so that I hit those roads just as they become 3-3, then the traffic moves smoothly and the outer lanes aren't full of parked cars yet.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not funny because it's true.
Re:Doing the math... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying I don't like my money, but I like what it buys me better. I suppose luckily the things I love to do cost time too. SCUBA is expensive in both time and money. So are the vacations I love to take. In the end though as long as my bills are getting paid and I've got money for my hobbies, I'd rather take a week off without pay than get paid to work it.
Re:Doing the math... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well... (Score:2, Insightful)