乘车上下班正在吞噬你

Also in Slate, Tom Vanderbilt asks if Twitter and tweets about traffic will change the way we drive, and he looked at whether bus drivers might have the most stressful job on the planet.

      也是在Slate杂志中，Tom Vanderbilt提出疑问:Twitter 以及其上 有关交通方面的tweet是否会改变我们驾驶的方式? 公交车司机是否是地球上压力最大的一项职业？

This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce. The Swedes could not say why. Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common. Perhaps long transit times exacerbate corrosive marital inequalities, with one partner overburdened by child care and the other overburdened by work. But perhaps the Swedes are just telling us something we all already know, which is that commuting is bad for you. Awful, in fact.

本周，瑞典Umea大学的研究人员发表了一项令人吃惊的研究成果：一对夫妇中，一方乘车上下班超过45分钟的离婚率要大40%。他们不能解释其原因。或许，长途通勤者更倾向于贫穷或受教育程度低，两种情况下离婚都更为普遍。或许，过长的乘车时间加剧了婚姻生活中的不平等性，一方照料孩子负担重，另一方也有过度繁重的工作。但是，或许这些瑞典人只是告诉了一些众所周知的事情，那就是：驱车上下班对你们不利，事实上，很糟糕。

Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-suck—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic.

  

      乘车上下班是一个令人头痛的人生际遇，它是一项平凡的任务，就像组装家具、更换执照一样平凡，并且你每天都必须做。如果你是乘车上下班，你将没有高质量的时间来与你爱的人在一起，不做运动、不做有挑战的事、不做爱、不爱抚你的小狗，也不会陪你的孩子(或者是你的Wii)。你将不会做这些让类人快乐的事情。不仅如此，反而会对公交车感到恶心，在火车上推推搡搡，或者陷入堵车僵局。

  

In the past decade or so, researchers have produced a significant body of research measuring the dreadfulness of a long commute. People with long transit times suffer from disproportionate pain, stress, obesity, and dissatisfaction. The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income left over from your cheap rent? It is almost certainly not worth it.

       在过去大约十年的时间里，研究人员建立了一个有效测量长期乘车上下班的糟糕程度的体系。那些花大量时间在乘车上下班上的人忍受不同程度的疼痛、压力、肥胖、不满。这换来了住在郊区大房子里、除开廉价的房租还剩下大笔收入等乐趣？这些都不值得。

First, the research proves the most obvious point: We dislike commuting itself, finding it unpleasant and stressful. In 2006, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Alan Krueger surveyed 900 Texan women, asking them how much they enjoyed a number of common activities. Having sex came in first. Socializing after work came second. Commuting came in dead last. \"Commuting in the morning appears particularly unpleasant,\" the researchers noted.

      首先，研究人员证明了最显而易见的一点：乘车本身是令人不快、给人带来压力的，我们并不喜欢。2006年，诺贝尔荣誉得主Daniel Kahneman和普林斯顿经济学家Alan Krueger调查了900个得克萨斯女性，询问她们享受一些日常活动的程度。做爱排在第一位，下班后的社交活动排在第二，乘车上下班排在最后。研究人员注意到，许多受试者认为，乘车上下班是早上出现的一件令人不快的事情。

That unpleasantness seems to have a spillover effect: making us less happy in general. A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance, found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work \"experienced worry for much of the previous day.\" That number falls to 28 percent for those with \"negligible\" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less \"enjoyment,\" as well.

      乘车上下班带来的不快似乎有中连带效应，让我们对待其他事物的时候普遍没有那么高兴。去年进行的一项健康幸福指数调查显示，比如，40%花超过90分钟乘车上下班的员工比从前经历更多的忧虑。那些花少于10分钟上下班的人员，忧虑度降到28%。花很长时间乘车上下班的工作者，觉得休息得没那么好，也不能很好地享受生活。

Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer \"social connections.\" Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled.

      长距离的乘车上下班也会令我们感到孤独。著名哈佛政治学家，《独享保龄球》一书的作者Robert Putnam将长距离的乘车上下班称之为社会隔离的最佳预示者。他断定，每花10分钟在乘车上，人们就将少与社会接触10分钟。而这些社会联系能让我们感觉到快乐和满足。

Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.

       那些我们花在听“驾车时间”收音节目的压抑时间里，不仅仅让我们没那么快乐，还让我们陷入健康状态欠佳的境地。就拿名义调查来说，那些每天花90分钟乘车上下班的员工里，有三分之一的人患有复发性颈椎问题。我们的行为也在发生着变化，我们花越多的时间在上下班上，我们花在锻炼和调整家庭饮食上的时间就更少，这些都会让我们看起来没那么精神焕发。

According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with \"a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction.\" It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make \"non-grocery food purchases\"—buying things like fast food—and will shift into \"lower-intensity\" exercise.

      根据布朗大学Thomas James Christian的研究成果来看，你花在乘车上的每一分钟就表示你少了0.0257秒的锻炼时间、0.0387分钟的烹饪食物的时间，外加0.2205的睡眠时间。听起来似乎也损失不大，但是如果把它们加起来呢！长的乘车上下班时间更倾向于增加工作者们购买“非杂货食品”的几率，他们会选择购买快餐，而且更倾向于做低强度的锻炼。

It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal.

      Thomas James Christian发现，是乘车上下班影响着我们，而非工作日的总时间。一个工作者，他每天花很少的时间乘车上下班，每天工作12个小时；另一个工作者，每天花1个小时在路途上，工作10个小时。两者比较的话，尽管两者花在充满压力、令人不快的工作任务上的总时间对等，但前者会比后者拥有更健康的生活习惯。

Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.

       另外，总的来看，远距离上下班的人更倾向于肥胖，普遍增加的乘车上下班时间是肥胖盛行的罪魁祸首之一。California大学Los Angeles分校以及 Cal State–Long Beach的研究人员观察，肥胖与一些生活因素（如体育锻炼）之间的关系，他们发现花在交通工具上的路程比其他因素跟肥胖的关系更大。

So, in summary: We hate commuting. It correlates with an increased risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and sleeplessness. It makes us eat worse and exercise less. Yet, we keep on doing it.

        因此，我们憎恨乘车上下班。它增加了我们患肥胖症、脊椎病、失眠的风险增加我们面对压力、离婚、烦恼的风险。它让我们饮食质量下降，运动得更少。但是，我们还是得照样乘车上下班。

Indeed, average one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called \"extreme commuters,\" whose number has doubled since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. They collectively spend 164 billion minutes per year shuttling to and from work.

       事实上，过去五十年，上下班所花的单程时间一直在增加，目前已达到24分钟（这还是在我们低估了真正所花时间的基础上）。六分之一的人花在上下班上的时间都超过45分钟，这还是单程的时间。据Census Bureau所说，从1900开始这个数字翻倍了，大约三百五十万的美国人每天都要承受90分钟的单程上下班，这就是所谓的“极限奔波”。他们每年总共要花上一千六百四十亿分钟穿梭于工作场所和住所。

Why do people suffer through it? The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: \"Drive until you qualify.\" Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter.

      人们为什么要承受这些呢？答案就在房地产经纪人所说的“驾驶到你适合的地方吧”。我们当中，许多人在镇上或市区工作，而那里房子昂贵。我们离工作地点越远，我们能付得起更好的房子。离工作仅10分钟的狭小两居室公寓和45分钟车程的宽敞的四居室大房子比起来，我们常常要选择后者。

For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is \"crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting.\" But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question.

      几十年来，经济学家告诫我们，在我们将房子买得很远的时候，我们并没有将时间代价考虑进去。追溯到1965年，经济学家John Kain写道，比起长的旅程，房子要在时间和金钱上花费得更多。时间是宝贵的，人们应该寻求一些时间来补偿花在路途上的时间。但是，我们更倾向于在房屋花费和交通费上找个折中点。

How much would we need to be compensated to make up for the hellish experience of a long commute? Two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, actually went about quantifying it, in a now famous 2004 paper entitled \"Stress That Doesn\'t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.\" They found that for an extra hour of commuting time, you would need to be compensated with a massive 40 percent increase in salary to make it worthwhile.

       我们怎样才能弥补这花在长长的路途上的时间呢？Zurich大学的两个经济学家, Bruno Frey 和Alois Stutzer发现，如果你花在路途上的时间要额外增加1小时，那么你的薪水要大大地增加40%才能对得起那多出来的“长途跋涉”时间。

But wait: Isn\'t the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one.

      但是等等，难道大房子和听Dylan的时间什么都不值得吗？当然不是，但是与快乐比起来就次要得多。在拥挤狭小的公寓和大房子之间做选择，我们往往将注意力集中在后者带来的有形资产。我们可以看见多余的卧室、拥有多余的浴缸，尽管我们并不经常用到它们。但是我们却恰恰忘了，花在汽车里的那些多余的时间带给我们的是持久的每天都要背负的隐形重担。

Do not take it lightly. People who say, \"My commute is killing me!\" are not exaggerators. They are realists.

      不要小瞧它。人们常说乘车上下班都快杀了我，这并不是夸张的说法。那是真实的。