Is there anything that can make a commute more satisfying? A new study co-authored by Winny Shen, an associate professor of organization studies at 91ÑÇÉ«'s , suggests there is: predictability.
For many people across the Greater Toronto Area, commuting is a significant part of daily life. "Toronto is a city where there can be a lot of traffic congestion and many people's commutes are quite long," says Shen, whose research explores worker health and well-being.
For many of those commuters, the trip back and forth is one of the least enjoyable parts of the day, triggering stress, fatigue and lost time. Researchers have traditionally focused on those challenges, often emphasizing objective measures such as distance and travel time.
Shen, however, has in, as she puts it, “how commutes may have benefits rather than only the ‘stress’ and ‘burden’ that a lot of research describes.â€
In collaboration with researchers in Israel and the U.S., Shen set out to better understand why some people are more satisfied with their journeys to work than others, focusing on a key psychological factor: predictability.
Two commutes that take the same amount of time can feel very different if one is consistently reliable while the other is plagued by unexpected delays, she notes. The study theorizes that predictability might improve the commuting experience in two ways: by reducing stress and by giving workers a greater sense of control over how they spend their time.
To test the idea, researchers conducted a three-week study involving 379 full-time employees who commuted to work at least twice a week. Across three surveys, participants answered questions about how consistent their daily journeys are, their levels of stress and autonomy during the journey and their overall enjoyment of the experience.
The results, published in the , found that commuters are more satisfied with their trip when they could reliably predict how long it would take, regardless of length. The study also finds that this relationship is driven by a greater sense of autonomy or control over how commuting time was spent.
This desire for control may stem from the ability to plan how commuting time will be used, the researchers say. Someone who knows their travel time will take 45 minutes can decide in advance whether to listen to a podcast, mentally prepare for the workday, unwind after work or simply enjoy a few moments to themselves. In this way, the commute can become a psychological buffer between work and home life. By contrast, a commuter facing uncertainty and unexpected delays may be more focused on the possibility of disruptions than on what they can do with the journey.
This distinction matters, says Shen, because commuting experiences do not necessarily end when the journey is over. Previous research has shown the effects of a commute can spill over into other areas of life, influencing well-being, job satisfaction and experiences at home.
"We know that people can bring the stresses of their commute with them to work and also into their homes in the evening," says Shen. "Given this, we are interested in how to make commutes less stressful and more beneficial for workers."
In the paper, Shen and her co-authors suggest transportation planners and employers can help improve commuter well-being by investing in more reliable transportation systems, accurate real-time travel information and flexible work arrangements that increase reliability. More broadly, they argue that commuting should not be viewed simply as lost time; when people can reliably anticipate how their trip will unfold, they may be able to use that time in ways that support well-being.
Additional work is needed to understand the relationship between predictability and commuter well-being. Future studies, says Shen, could incorporate physiological measures of stress such as cortisol levels, examine more diverse populations and transportation systems, include larger numbers of public transit users and test interventions such as flexible scheduling policies. The authors also suggest exploring whether the way trip information is presented influences how commuters experience consistency and control.
"We hope that this work will help people to consider how to make their commutes more enjoyable and useful to them, perhaps for recovery or to get ahead with work or family responsibilities," says Shen. "Although commuting may be inevitable, it does not have to be 'wasted' or an unpleasant time.â€