Backgrounder: Commuting
The historians’ view… Has the daily commute always been a chore? As commuters bewail traffic jams, delays and rising fares, two experts explore the long history of travelling to work and consider the challenges and opportunities presented by the car revol
Formost of human history, people have had to travel on foot. For settled populations, this has meant that work (however organised) needed to be relatively local to home. I would stress relatively local: I remember visiting the Peak District and doing what I felt was a pretty strenuous climb up a large hill and back down the other side, before realising that 19th-century workers were climbing over the same hill twice a day, before and after work!
Although workers then may have been more accustomed to longer walks than we are today, reliance on walking limited the extent to which home and work could slip apart. A two-mile walk might have been possible, but eight miles (today’s average commuting distance) would have been much less practical on foot – especially given the long working hours, which averaged around 54 hours a week in 1870, compared with 37 now. As soon as people could be expected to travel by other forms of transport, that distance could grow – and it did. In the UK, most people still walked to work during the 1930s, but for some the bicycle had already expanded the range of possible commute distances.
Since the 19th century, London has been different, with the suburban rail network and other public transport providing a basis for spatial expansion and agglomeration that simply didn’t exist in other towns and cities. During the ‘ bike boom’ of the early 20th century, Londoners didn’t take to cycling as commuters in other parts of the country did, with many in the capital instead using rail, trams, buses and trolleybuses to get to work.
London public transport often hit the headlines in the past – as it does now – with debates over the need to introduce ‘workman’s fares’ for early-morning Tube travellers in the 19th century. The concentration of power, wealth and influence in the city has encouraged this, with many national decision-makers themselves affected by its transport system.
Substantial inequalities, both geographical and social, in access to transport govern what people are able to do, what they can earn, and how much goods and services cost them. Although the gap has narrowed, women still tend to drive less and use the bus more than men. We know that women tend to have shorter commutes than men, partly because they still have much greater caring responsibilities. This has helped to reduce women’s choice of work, and hence their earnings and potential for advancement relative to men.
Overall, we’re working less than our ancestors did 100 years ago, but spending longer getting to and from work. Time spent commuting rose by an estimated 50 per cent during the 20th century. And given the shift from walking, cycling and public transport to car use, most people are no longer getting healthy exercise from their journey to work. Instead, it is harming us. This affects both people outside cars and drivers themselves, who inhale toxic air pollution and spend their commuting time almost completely sedentary – which we now know is actively harmful to health.
But perhaps we shouldn’t hope for a historic reversal and the decline of the commute. If we can make it healthy, the journey to work could be our best hope for turning around our physical inactivity crisis.
Commute times rose by 50 per cent in the 20th century. We’re working less than 100 years ago, but spending longer getting to and from work
DR RACHEL ALDRED
Wemight assume that 20th-century commuting was dictated largely by mass car ownership, but the reality was more complex. UK car ownership levels spread less rapidly than in the United States, with around 2 million cars on British roads by 1939. Motorists were drawn from the most affluent families and did not necessarily use the car for their journey to work. The car’s flexibility contrasted sharply with public transport and the bicycle, but this advantage was less apparent during rush-hour journeys into city or town centres, along congested roads that were often in poor condition.
The UK was slower than the US, Germany or Italy in building motorways. The M1 was not opened until 1959, over two decades after Germany’s first autobahn attracted admiring British motorists. Before 1939, car sales to business users represented 25– 40 per cent of the total, indicating that the majority were bought for leisure purposes. Even in the 1960s, most prospective buyers were more excited by the leisure potential of cars than their commuting convenience.
In the countryside, the car’s transformative effect on travelling to work was evident sooner. Vehicle ownership made it possible for the middle classes, who worked in towns and cities, to move from urban and suburban homes to more rural locations. After decades of depopulation, in the 1930s the population in rural England and Wales increased. It’s no coincidence that adult daughters in farming families were more likely to be encouraged to take the steering wheel. For rural families, the benefits of having a driving daughter (or wife) outweighed the mythology about the ‘woman driver’ and her alleged incompetence.
In urban society, the impact of this mythology was demonstrated by long-lasting gender disparities in licence-holding. In the mid-1960s, 13 per cent of women held a driving licence compared with 56 per cent of men; in the 1970s that narrowed to 30 per cent and 68 per cent respectively. However, the rise in female licence carriers wasn’t matched by a rise in commuter numbers because – with men having first call on most family cars – women were less likely to drive to work than their male counterparts.
In the late 20th century, commuting by car became more common, and its costs – in terms of congestion, pollution and the loss of physical exercise – became more apparent. There was a steep decline in cycling to school and work between the 1950s and late 1960s as roads became dominated by motor traffic. This owed much to the powerful motoring lobby, including the Automobile Association, which was founded in 1905 to thwart police speed traps. Other supporters in politics and the media trumpeted the advantages of the ‘car-owning democracy’.
The recent travails of rail commuters stranded in various parts of Britain suggest public transport commuters could use a lobbying group with the effectiveness of the AA. They might, though, take some heart from the return of cycling commuters to Britain’s roads, with bicycle sales at more
than 2.5 million a year.
is professor of modern British and Irish social history at Queen’s University Belfast. He is currently writing Joyriding: A History (Palgrave)
Vehicle ownership made it possible for the middle classes, who worked in towns and cities, to move to more rural locations
PROFESSOR SEAN O’CONNELL