Lengthy car and transit commutes are detrimental to health

Short transit good for you

Jay Blazek Crossley, Nov 08, 11.

Long commutes between 30 and 60 minutes are detrimental to sleep quality, stress, and general health of drivers as well as transit riders, as reported by the Atlantic Cities, while transit trips shorter than 30 minutes improve your health, according to a new report (pdf):

One reason for the linear association among transit riders is most likely that longer transit rides often involve transfers. That not only increases the length of the trip but also its unpredictability (waiting for several different arrivals), its variability (some trips take much longer than others), and its potential for crowding — all factors that have been shown to increase the stress of the commute, as shown above.

But there was one truly hopeful result from the report (the only one noted by the researchers as “interesting”), and it came from workers who commuted less than 30 minutes by transit. If you fell into this group, your odds of having high everyday stress actually went down. Exactly why is anyone’s guess — perhaps a quick subway hop is a good way to wind down — but, nevertheless, that’s just one more reason mass transit might not be as bad as you think.

Living in neighborhoods with “higher quality density” is associated with “fewer symptoms” related to depression, while neighborhoods with higher ratios of automobile use relative to land use are associated with more depression symptoms, according to another recent study.