We recently moved to new office space in Austin which is closer to my home, and I’ve enjoyed shaving about 30 minutes a day off my commute. On a recent morning, I had to go to a meeting in downtown Austin and found myself sitting in traffic near my old office, realizing how fortunate I was.
Traffic Near Downtown Austin
As we speak with more and more prospects for our office space and virtual offices and job candidates vying to join the BusinesSuites team, we hear more and more talk about quality of life, which, in many cases, translates to having office space closer to home, our children’s schools, and amenities.
As much as we all complain about traffic and our commutes, I was surprised to learn that a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report showed that the USA actually has one of the shortest average daily commute times in the world, at 28 minutes per day. Catherine Rampell recently blogged at the New York Times about this study, providing some interesting insight and a link to an academic study showing that commuting is, not surprisingly, one of the least enjoyable daily activities.
The study does make one thing clear: we can be happy we don’t live in South Africa, where the average commute time is double that of the USA.