The number of commuters spending an hour or more travelling to work has increased dramatically over the last decade, fuelling new demands for flexible working.
According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Londoners are faring particularly badly with over 1.3 million workers now travelling for longer than an hour each day.
However, it’s not just those in the capital that face longer commutes. In Wales the number of workers travelling for over an hour each day has risen by 43 per cent, closely followed by Northern Ireland (up 42.2 per cent) and the south west (41.4 per cent).
In the north west, more than half a million more workers are spending over an hour travelling to work, and 145,000 Scots are setting off for work earlier and returning later. Across Yorkshire, the Midlands and the east of England, the story is the same with thousands more workers feeling the strain of a long commute to work.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “We work some of the longest hours in Europe, and on top of this have to endure the second longest daily commute in Europe – on average 54 minutes per day. This adds up to a very stressful working week for millions of workers across the UK, and employers could ease this strain for their workers by introducing flexible working.”
The TUC research coincides with National Commute Smart Week this week, run by Work Wise UK, designed to encourage employers to introduce measures such as home-working, flexible working, condensed hours and nine-day fortnights.
Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, said: “If everyone travelled one day per week outside peak hours, commuters during peak hours would drop by 20 per cent; or if everyone worked just one day every other week from home, overall commuting would drop by 10 per cent. We have all seen what the impact could be on the roads and public transport.”
One Response
Looking at the causes and a range of possible cures
It would be good to see more information about the increase in travel time. For example it would be useful to have a graph of the increase in travel time by location and by mode of travel over (say) the last 10 years. When the article says that travel time is ‘up 42.2 percent’ it would be helpful to know over what period this was measured.
Having seen such an increase it would be well worth looking at causes. Are people choosing to live further from work? Are more people travelling to work? Are transport systems less reliable?
Having looked at the causes it should be possible to offer a range of changes, not just flexible working. Flexible working may be possible for some kinds of work but not others.
Other options might include:
– Living nearer to where you work (or vice versa!), enabling walking or cycling to be a possibility
– Car sharing (We could reduce the traffic by half if people travelled two to a car instead of one. So commuting during peak time could drop 50%).
– Leaving the car at home and taking the bus or train.
This is in addition to flexitime and working from home.
I would very much like to see a follow-up article that covers these possibilities.