IF YOUR commute wasn’t frustrating enough, prepare to be made even more miserable as a new website works out just how many years in total — that’s right years — in your life you will spend squashed face to armpit on trains and stuck in traffic jams.
To add salt to the wound, the online travel calculator also lets you know how much money you’ve spent on fares or petrol and what kind of house you could have bought with all that dosh instead.
The gadget comes as rush hours spill out to now being more than three hours long each afternoon.
According to Ford’s new commuter calculator, the average Australian’s commute, spread out over their working life, equates to 417 days commuting or 1.1 years travelling.
Or, to put in another way, that’s enough time to watch 5298 movies.
“We wanted to give Aussie commuters an easy way to equate their lifetime commute to every day actions, and show what they could buy with all the money they’re spending,” Jasmine Mobarek, Ford’s Communications Manager told news.com.au.
“It can be quite eye opening when you look at the bigger picture.”
The commuter calculator works by users choosing their mode of travel to and from work, entering the cost of that trip in fares or petrol, their age, when they hope to retire and a few other factors.
It then spits out the days and years you already have, and likely will, spend getting from home to work and back again.
TERRIBLE COMMUTE
According to 2011 research from insurance company AMP and the University of Canberra the average commute has gone up from 3.9 hours per week in 2002 to 4.4 hours, or 53 minutes per weekday. That’s roughly the time, without congestion, to travel from Frenchs Forest in Sydney’s north to the CBD.
Over a lifetime of work that commute would cost $92,500, money that could otherwise buy a 43m2 house in Bali — the calculator assumes we all want to buy a house in Bali.
Travelling by train five days a week, half-hour each way, from Heidelberg, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, to Southern Cross station will take up 1.4 years over your working life and lead you to miss out on 6324 movies.
And it will set you back a cool $90,000.
A longer commute, such as the busy run from the NSW Central Coast town of Woy Woy to central Sydney, can lead to more than three hours a day stuck in a train carriage.
According to the calculator you’ll spend four years shuttling back and forth, a mere 1460 days, when you could have been watching 18,563 movies instead. You’ll also be $175,000 worse off, money which could otherwise have been spent on an 80m2 place in, you guessed it, Bali.
This commute is classed as terrible.
Unsurprisingly, a 20 minute cycle each day, say between Brisbane’s South Bank and the University of Queensland campus in St Lucia, is classed as a great commute.
With all the money saved you need not worry about not being able to afford that house on a certain Indonesian island paradise.
“What the research shows us is that Aussies are spending an exorbitant amount of time and money commuting and people want to see improvements on road and transportation options,” said Ms Mobarek.
RIDE SHARING UP, TAXIS DOWN
Ford, which is pitching itself as “mobility company” rather than a pure car manufacturer, lists a number of alternatives to the regular commute including ride sharing and even smart minibus services.
According to research by the firm, private cars are now used by 30 per cent of commuters. It’s nothing against the 58 per cent of people using public transport to get to and from the workplace.
There has been a big jump in people under 30 using ride hailing services with 18.7 per cent now taking advantage of Uber compared to less than nine per cent of those above 30. Younger commuters are also using fewer taxis.
Sydneysiders are getting the rawest deal when it comes to commuting spending five and half hours a week in transit. People in Brisbane have a five hour weekly commute with 4.5 hours for Melburnians. In the Northern Territory weekly travel time is just 30 minutes each weekday to home and back.
Meanwhile, a new report has found even when you get to work the pain doesn’t end.
Research from the RACQ has shown that parking in Brisbane’s CBD is Australia’s most expensive at $28 per hour.
In Sydney, parking per hour was a whisker below this but in Melbourne it was an almost reasonable $19.40 an hour.
The motoring club’s spokeswoman, Renee Smith, said up to half the congestion in city centres was simply motorists looking for a park.
“We don’t buy the argument that high prices and fewer spaces in new buildings help reduce congestion, as many CBD businesses have simply leased other existing car parks for their use; continuing to push congestion levels higher.”
RUSH HOUR GETS LONGER
Melbourne may have cheaper parking but it’s facing unprecedented traffic congestion with the afternoon peak now lasting three and a quarter hours.
A report commissioned by Infrastructure Victoria, reported in the Herald Sun last week, revealed the morning peak now lasts a record 2.7 hours, 3.2 hours in the afternoon and delays even outside of rush hour have increased by 30 per cent.
In Sydney, commuters have largely survived the first two days without paper tickets which were withdrawn on Monday, although queues at Opal smartcard top up machines have been seen.
The next big test comes in September with changes to Opal fare structures, the most contentious of which will see the weekly travel reward — where all trips are free after eight in a week — withdrawn.
benedict.brook@news.com.au
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