Its all about efficiency. Humans always thrive on the question about how we can do something faster, better and easily. As an old idiom goes, give the job to the lazy person and they will find the easiest way to do it. So when it comes to projects at work, at home, and anywhere else for that matter, we want to deliver using the least amount of resources – human and other – because that is what we think is needed. Nay, that is what is efficient.
In fact every field today is consumed with this question of how you can be most efficient and use the least amount of resources to deliver the same thing. That is why Artificial Intelligence has become so popular, it promises the solution to your answers through just one prompt. Your whole report written in less than a minute. A presentation created for your next big meeting in a snap. I explore this dependency on AI in my recent post.
Transport planning also has an efficiency slogan, and its called the theory of disutility. The theory theorises that travelling is a disutility and the only reason people travel is for the end purpose. So let’s say you travel for work everyday. You aren’t necessarily enjoying the commute and the commute is done only for reaching work. The value of being at the office is higher than the loss you make during the commute. If you could suddenly reduce the travel time to work, why wouldn’t you do that? For the Harry Potter fans out there, its like using floo powder and magically appearing on the other side. That is what the disutility theory would argue we should do, if we could.
The theory further proposes that people are constantly trying to reduce their disutility. Google maps is the perfect example of it – where you add your address and your destination address, and it suggests the shortest time possible between the two. So with the theory of disutility, people are constantly trying to “Google maps” their travel time between an origin and destination, thereby reducing their travel time.
There is nuance here. Its not only about the shortest amount of travel time. Its about net-utility. Lets say you are travelling to beautiful Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa from Durban. The journey would take you about 2-3 hours depending on where you are travelling from in Durban. Basically that is a 6 hour commute. The theory of disutility doesn’t argue that for this to be a positive utility you need to spend more than 6 hours in Drakensberg to make this a positive experience. Rather it states that the utility you get from travelling should be more than the disutility. Essentially, you need to feel satisfied that the experience of travelling and staying in Drakensberg is more valuable to you than the discomfort that comes with travelling. Otherwise, you won’t do the trip. Its not only the theory of disutility that argues that, any engineer that you meet will also argue this. We (engineers) love efficiency.
But does this theory really hold true in real life? Are humans the efficiency-mongerers who always pop open the Google maps and find the most efficient time to their destination?
The answer seems complicated, at least to me. Since the pandemic ended, my wife and I have heard more and more people in our circles moving further away from the city center and from their jobs to live in “peaceful” suburbs and new areas. Now, I acknowledge that I am only talking about certain income groups. This doesn’t apply to low-income households, of course, who are trying to reduce their travel time because the bulk of their expenses are spent on transport. And there is a lot to unpack to the transport planning needed for low-income households, and the need for more affordable housing and decentralised work places that also have their bases close to where people live. I am pro-anything that reduces the burden on people in terms of living expenses because honestly, we are all tired of being the “resilient” people that everyone wants us to be. But I won’t focus on that for this post.
Instead, I want to unpack whether people, who can afford to live closer to work and pay higher rentals, are actively trying to reduce their travel time? More importantly, I am interested in the anecdotal evidence that my wife and I seem to be hearing about people moving further away from their workplaces. There are two things to note to unpack this issue. Firstly, most jobs in Cape Town are still located in the city center and surrounding areas – meaning that people have to commute to the city everyday in a single direction movement to access their work places. Here is a great analysis about this that I recommend reading. Secondly, rentals are more expensive as you get closer to town. If you want the best bang-for-buck for your money in terms of rentals, such that you get a bigger space for the same price, you would ideally move away from the city center as much as possible.
I believe that there is a bias of time saving that revolves around transport planning. In fact, people aren’t always trying to reduce their time. Especially, if they own a car and can afford to live anywhere in the city. In this case, the “buffer” that people have between their homes and the work place is good because it helps people to decompress from their work and wind down. The commute acts as the time where your brain shifted from work mode to home mode. It’s like you were in a warped version of the Severance lift, where the drive itself was the lift and you moved from your “innie” to your “outie”, forgetting everything that happened at work.
Efficiency is also nuanced. There is the time efficiency but there is also the financial efficiency. Living in areas further away from the city means that you get better bang-for-buck, with a larger space for the same price as I mentioned before. If you have children, the larger space gives your child(ren) more room to play and move around. Suburban areas are also quieter, with less noise from traffic and other noises. You also get to access other services that you may not been able to in the city. For example, many Suburban neighbourhoods have great spaces for daily walks – an easy entry exercise for people and something that instantly rejuvenates you.
Measuring the positive utility of travel is complicated though. This study, for example, showed that travel isn’t necessarily a derived demand from our want of activities. But in self reports, people are unlikely to share the positive experience of travel. People also have a specific affinity to travel routes in some cases. Your route choices, for example, might be based on something entirely different than time saving. You might take the route to work that passes by your favourite bakery or the coffee shop that has the perfect cinnamon mixture. These examples throw the disutility models assumptions right out of the door.
In a nutshell, human behaviours are nuanced. In fact, a study completed by my previous lecturer, Roger Behrens, showed that people’s travel behaviours only shifted around major events of their lives. Rather than people constantly trying to review their travel time and reducing their disutility, the phases of their lives contributed to how long they would commute. In other words, the travel time doesn’t matter at all – its the other nuances of life that actually matter like affordability, family life, job opportunities etc. For example, your priorities as a student are completely different from when you are older, have a job, and have children to take care of.
Behaviours can be influenced though. Maybe not in the short-term but definitely in the long-term. A few people I talked to said that they wouldn’t move far away from work if they had to commute daily for 30 mins or longer. But, if an employer offered a hybrid approach to work than their employees might live far away. Essentially, travelling long hours 2 or 3 times a week is fine but everyday is definitely a deal breaker.
Public transport would also play a massive role. Driving everyday for 30 mins or longer is probably “wasteful” because you can’t do anything other than listen absentmindedly to whatever is playing on the radio or on your phone. But the same commute on a train or bus, is an entirely different experience as you can probably get something done during the commute. Especially, when the in-vehicle travel time of the public transport systems matches the car.
In the past month, I have talked to so many people about this theory. And their responses have all been nuanced. That is the beauty of being human if you ask me. The pluralistic thinking that we all have has astounding benefits. The theory of disutility is a great starting point to plan any transport system. It ensures that we plan with the thinking that all basic services should be within walking distances of people so that they don’t have to travel long distances to access them. In South Africa, where apartheid spatial planning has led to so many access challenges till today, thinking of travel time as a disutility is imperative. But the element of human nature still seems to be a missing piece when discussing about the theory.
As we continue to develop our cities and transport systems, perhaps we need to expand our thinking beyond disutility. We need frameworks that account for the full spectrum of human experience – the coffee shop detours, the decompression drives, the trade-offs between space and proximity. Rather than seeing these as irrational deviations from efficiency, we might recognize them as essential elements of well-lived lives. After all, if transport planning is ultimately about serving humans, shouldn’t it embrace all the nuanced, sometimes contradictory ways we choose to move through the world?
Aliasgher Janmohammed 