The Pump Handle

Worth Reading: Poverty, Trauma, and Commuting’s Effects on Marriages

Posted by Liz Borkowski on June 8, 2011
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A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked:

Jamie Holmes in The New Republic: Why Can’t More Poor People Escape Poverty?

Maryn McKenna at Superbug: 30 Years of AIDS, and How it Began (also Part II and Part III)

Jesse Green in New York: “A Textbook of Trauma” (“The crash of the Chinatown charter was the worst bus accident in the city’s history. Fifteen of its victims ended up at one hospital. Fourteen lived.”)

Emily Dugan in The Independent: The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants

Annie Lowrey in Slate: Your Commute is Killing You (“Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia”)

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Comments

  1. #1 dametrot
    June 8, 2011

    I used to commute 1.5 – 2 hrs (one way) to work. Because my husband was disabled, I had to replace those lost housewifery hours with a housekeeper, dog walker, and sometimes care giver. Once I added up the actual cost (ignoring the expence of 8 hrs a week in the car at my wage and the unquantifiable but REAL misery of it) of the commute, I found I could easily double our rent and still come out even. So we moved to the very expensive neighborhood where I work and now I walk. Costs about the same, I get regular exercise, more time with my husband, and I’m incandescently happy with the new sitch. Really, people should consider what commuting really costs us.

  2. #2 Liz Borkowski
    June 9, 2011

    Dametrot, I’m glad you found a better solution! I don’t know how people who spend four hours commuting every day manage. But especially when spouses have jobs in different locations, kids are settled in schools, etc., it can be hard for people to move closer to work, and so they put up with the toll it takes.

    Living closer to work in a more-expensive home can make financial sense even for people who aren’t calculating what they pay for goods and services they wouldn’t need to purchase if they weren’t spending hours in the car each day. The Center for Neighborhood Technology and Center for Transit-Oriented Development have put together a Housing + Transportation Affordability Index that “offers the true cost of housing based on its location by measuring the transportation costs associated with place.”