Batgung

I read an article recently that really struck a chord. It’s from the April 16 2007 New Yorker, written by one Nick Paumgarten, and it’s all about commuting. Although it focuses on commuting in the USA, and inevitably spends a lot of time on driving, parts of it that deal with commuting in New York City itself are quite apposite to life here in Hong Kong.

Most strikingly, perhaps, Paumgarten quotes the punchline from a recent academic study on commuting:

Three years ago, two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, released a study called “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.” They found that, if your trip is an hour each way, you’d have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as “satisfied” with life as a noncommuter is.

Wow! Reading this article obviously got me thinking about my own commute, which takes me not much under . . . one hour. I sincerely hope I’m making 40% more money than I deserve.

Frey and Stutzer conclude, however, that most people don’t balance the commute/salary equation with much insight or care. They’re not rational, i.e. they’re much more likely to hang onto a long commute for a marginally higher salary than they are to simply take a pay cut and have a far more pleasant lifestyle.

So I thought about it: would I really take a big pay cut just to avoid my commute? Perhaps I am grossly overpaid, and that’s why I don’t weep spontaneously thought of getting up in the morning and hitting the road for work. But the truth is, I don’t really mind my commute that much at all; I actually find it almost – may I say it? – pleasant.

Here’s what my commute looks like. I live near an MTR station that’s a terminus of the line I need to take, so I can get on an empty train. Sometimes – maybe half of the time – I get a seat. It’s not worth the stress to try to fight for a seat, since I’m only on the train for about 10 minutes. I then get off, and walk out to street level to a bus stop (this takes me three or four minutes, maybe). This bus takes me to a stop just across the street from my office. Since it’s a busy route, I typically wait five minutes or so. And since my stop is just the second one on the route, I can always get a seat. This is crucial when you’re as tall as I am, because many of Hong Kong’s older buses’ ceilings aren’t high enough to allow me to stand up straight.

So although my commute isn’t short, I consider it quite ‘easy’. I find, even after many years of such commuting, that I actually enjoy it.

Paumgarten’s analysis recognizes this possibility, because not all commutes are created equal. Crucially for us in Hong Kong, using public transport for a commute is markedly different from driving yourself. For example, the aforementioned Swiss researchers Paumgarten quotes note that:

Train riding has other benefits. Passengers can sleep or read, send e-mails or play cards. Delays are out of their control.

Well, duh, those of us in HK might say. But I latched on to that last sentence, which I think is the key. When I’m making my commute, I actually like not having control over what happens. It’s liberating. I can read a book or otherwise amuse myself for the great majority of its duration; it’s only that short walk when I transfer in which I actually have to pay attention to what I’m doing. This lack of control isn’t popular with everybody, of course, but if you can see the positive side of it, it’s a big stress-reducer.

Other people’s commutes in Hong Kong of course vary across a wide spectrum. Some are shorter and easier than mine in some ways, but harder in others. For example, Mrs Tall’s got what I call an ‘umbrella-free’ commute. She can stay under cover all the way from our flat to her office, courtesy of covered walkways into and out of the MTR stations she travels between. But she’s got the downside of taking a much more crowded line than mine; when she changes trains, she often has to wait for several to pass by before she can get on board, and then it’s so crowded there’s little chance she can read or do anything else productive.

There are also some Hong Kong commuters whose travels are so extensive that they fall into the ‘extreme commuter’ category the article discusses. I think most belong to two categories. The first includes those who live deep into the countryside of the New Territories, or away from the ferry piers or other transport connections on the outlying islands such as Cheng Chau and Lantau. The second comprises people who live in Hong Kong and essentially commute across the border to Guangdong province – as well as those who do the opposite. There are, in fact, quite a few people who work in Hong Kong but who wish to take advantage of the much lower cost of living across the border; they’re the ones you’ll find on those long-haul buses that run from different parts of the city up to Lok Ma Chau, and then beyond . . .

There’s another advantage to Hong Kong life that may take some of the pressure off us in terms of commuting and generally getting around. Paumgarten paraphrases Robert Putnam, a well-known American sociologist, on the combined effect of our commuting and other day-to-day travels:

Putnam likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. . . . The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had.

Thinking about this, I can really see Putnam’s point: although my home/work commute takes almost an hour, I can walk over to my neighborhood shopping mall in just a couple of minutes. If I had to drive for an hour to get home from work, then pick up Mrs Tall and drive for another substantial chunk of time to get to the supermarket to do some food shopping, I’d be cranky too – or at least crankier than I already am.

Most of us in Hong Kong don’t sleep near where we work. But nearly all of us can shop very near either our homes or our workplaces. This makes for ‘triangles’ that may have a couple of long sides, but then a short third side that makes them disproportionately narrow; they therefore cover very little area.

When I finished reading the article, and started thinking about writing this one, one other thing struck me. I realized that I like my commute because I see it as time I get wholly to myself, and that I can use as I please, at least within the constraints of being on a train and a bus. This leads to me being jealous of that time, which in turn leads to me being – sometimes, at least – excessively irritated when that time is interrupted or disturbed. It also occurred to me that I’m not exactly alone in this. The guy up there in the row of seats in front of me is likely just as pleased to have 30 unbroken minutes in which he can read his book – or play his video game or talk on his phone or whatever – as I am with mine. And he’s likely just as irritated when his bubble is invaded.

Is it possible that this phenomenon, which is an inevitable product of lots of people doing lots of long-term commuting, is at least partly the cause of so many complaints about rudeness in Hong Kong? That is, commuting time for most of us isn’t really ‘public’ time; since we’re so deeply grooved in our commuting patterns, and so anxious to make something personally positive out of that time, the last thing we want to intrude on us is the need to be superficially polite and civil. That takes time and attention, and frankly we just don’t want to begrudge that kind of effort each and every day.

So how about the rest of you: what are your commutes like? Any horror stories? Coping strategies? We’d love to hear them.