Technological advances have failed to reduce daily commute times, as a new study reveals that humans everywhere spend approximately 78 minutes per day travelling, regardless of their living standards or available transportation methods.
Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and McGill University analysed data from 43 countries representing over half the world’s population.
The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that societies stabilise their total daily travel time at around 1.3 hours, with a minimal variability of just 12 minutes. This consistency suggests an innate “time budget” that defies improvements in transport efficiency.
“The most important finding is that people don’t travel less when speed or efficiency increases; instead, they travel farther,” said Eric Galbraith, the study’s corresponding author.
The speed paradox
The findings confirm that populations spend between 66 and 90 minutes a day travelling from one place to another, whether by walking, biking, or driving. The researchers suggest this “convergent” range stems from a deep-rooted psychological desire to see surroundings balanced against the practical limits of time expenditure.
The study argues that, because the time budget remains constant, faster transport technologies lead to greater distances being covered and higher energy consumption, rather than time savings.
The researchers illustrated this by comparing city infrastructures. A city organised around light rail, where residents spend 40 minutes on trains and the rest walking, predictably consumes less energy than a city dependent on combustion-engine cars, even if the car travel covers more distance in the same timeframe.
The authors emphasise that urban planners must focus on the energy intensity of the transport mode per hour, rather than trying to reduce travel time or increase distance efficiency.
“Since total travel time is nearly constant,” said co-author William Fajzel, a PhD student at McGill University. “Policies that enable people to choose low-energy-per-hour modes of transport will be the most effective for reducing transport energy demand.”
