The 1 Thing That Could Drastically Improve Your Commute—Even if You Never Use It

Better public transit also helps the car commuters who never use it. Here’s how.

[Source Image: whitecityrecords/Adobe Stock]

You’re stuck in traffic again, late for work, watching brake lights stretch to the horizon. According to the most recent data in the U.S. (2024), here are some of the ways traffic jams are lowering the quality of life:

Americans lost an average of an entire work week sitting in traffic.

Commuter costs have surged 16% over the past five years to reach $269 billion annually.

Congestion time for commuters has gone up 10% since 2019 and it’s 19% for trucks delivering all the products we buy. 

Stress increases of 80%, and aggressiveness increases of 52%.

Long stretches in traffic lead to back pain, leg pain, and headaches.

There’s no one solution to dealing with crowds of people all trying to move in the same direction at the same time, but there is one opportunity staring us all in the face that hardly any commuter seems to notice—public transit.

The power of public transit

If you’re like most drivers, public transit is for other people. But here’s the thing: investing in better buses and trains could make your commute faster and less stressful, without you ever setting foot on one. Maybe transit is for other people to ride, but it can help improve your car trips.

A surprisingly small drop in cars on the road—just 5% to 10%—can dramatically ease congestion, and public transit is one of the most effective ways to get that drop.

Congestion doesn’t increase linearly as the number of vehicles goes up. Streets handle car traffic just fine, until you cross a certain capacity threshold when everything quickly collapses. A transportation planning model developed in the 1960s quantifies this phenomenon. On a typical urban road running at 90% capacity:

Baseline: About 10% delay over free-flow conditions

5% fewer cars (85% capacity): Delay drops by roughly 18%

10% fewer cars (81% capacity): Delay plummets by 35%

We’ve all experienced the exponential improvements in travel time from modest reductions in vehicle volume. If transit gives some commuters a viable alternative, your commute could save minutes each day without building a single new lane.

Transit helps people who don’t use transit

A transportation system that offers reliable and convenient public transit isn’t forcing you out of your car. There’s only so much space on the roads, and one bus can hold 40 or 50 people, replacing that many cars. One train can replace hundreds of cars. 

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