I have a short quote in an article in the Christian Science Monitor today about extreme commuting.

The thing that strikes me about the extreme commute is how something absurd has become normalized. As Andres Duany said in my interview with him, “time in public means time in traffic” and its a competitive, hostile experience.

The article is partly in response to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2007 Urban Mobility Report which, among other things, says

• Trips take longer

• Congestion affects more of the day
• Congestion affects weekend travel and rural areas
• Congestion affects more personal trips and freight shipments
• Trip travel times increasingly are unreliable

They have some suggested solutions, but they mostly have to do with traffic engineering (not surprising considering the source). It’s a kind of myopic viewpoint, restricted by the profession. A more comprehensive view would consider urban planning issues, including multiple design theories and scenarios.

Then there’s the personal angle:

“There’s the philosophy that people buy houses on Sunday and discover on Monday that it’s a tough commute.”