The pros and cons of commuting

The pros and cons of commuting
通勤的利与弊
Ask someone if they have regrets, and very few people will say: "I wish I had spent more of my life commuting." The time spent travelling from home to work and back again tends to be neither relaxing nor productive. It is usually routine and sometimes unpleasant: anything that involves loads of traffic or armpits is hard to like.
如果问一个人是否有遗憾，几乎没有人会说：“我希望当初把更多人生时间用在通勤上。”从家到工作地点再返回，这段时间往往既不令人放松，也不高效。通勤通常是常规步骤，有时令人不愉快：任何涉及大量交通或胳肢窝的事情都很难让人喜欢。
So when people are surveyed about their perfect commute time, the unsurprising answer tends to be "shorter". On average people around the world spend roughly an hour a day commuting. But however long their travel time is, they want to lop that total roughly in half.
因此当人们被问及理想的通勤时间时，意料之中的答案往往是“更短”。平均而言，世界各地的人们每天大约花费一小时通勤。但是无论通勤时间有多长，他们都希望将总时间大致缩短一半。
Long journeys can impose costs on employers as well as commuters. For instance, they can increase staff turnover. Time spent travelling can also hurt productivity.
长途通勤不仅给通勤者，也给雇主带来负担。例如，长途通勤可能导致员工流动率上升。通勤时间也会损害工作效率。
A study by Hongyu Xiao of the Bank of Canada and his co-authors found that every 10km increase in an inventor's commuting distance brought about by a corporate relocation was associated with a 5% decrease in patents. What lies behind this fall-off is not clear, but one explanation is simply that people are spending less time at work.
加拿大银行的肖宏宇（音译）及其合著者的一项研究发现，企业搬迁导致发明者的通勤距离每增加10公里，与专利数量减少5%相关。导致这种下降的原因尚不明确，但是有一种解释很简单，就是人们的工作时间减少了。
No one yearns to spend more of their life commuting, then. But even long journeys can have benefits. In his study, for example, Mr De Vos also asked people what was the maximum commute length they were prepared to tolerate.
因此没有人渴望在通勤上花费更多生命。但即使是漫长的通勤也可能带来好处。例如，德沃斯在研究中还询问了人们愿意忍受的最大通勤时间是多长。
This was more, on average, than the length of their current commute, which suggests some awareness of the upsides to tolerating protracted travel times: lower housing costs, better amenities close to home and a greater choice of employer.
平均而言，这比他们目前的通勤时间更长，表明人们对忍受长时间通勤的好处有一定认识：更低的住房成本、住房周围更好的便民设施，以及更多的雇主选择。
Ismir Mulalic of Copenhagen Business School points out that the one-hour global average commute has remained pretty steady over time despite big changes in transport technology. He recalls a study he co-authored into the effects of a corporate relocation; to his surprise, some of the workers who were suddenly handed shorter commutes reacted to this "beautiful present" by moving home to be farther away.
哥本哈根商学院的伊斯米尔·穆拉利奇指出，尽管交通技术发生了巨大变化，但全球平均一小时的通勤时间长期以来一直保持相当稳定。他回忆自己参与合著的一项关于公司搬迁影响的研究，令他惊讶的是，一些通勤时间突然变短的员工对这个“美好礼物”的反应竟然是搬得更远一点。
A commute can bring rewards of its own, too. Some scholars burble about commuting as "a liminal space", a pompous term that nonetheless captures something real: the journey to and from the office is a handy way to gear up for the working day or to wind down from it. Active modes of travel like cycling and walking are correlated with greater well-being than sitting in a car.
通勤本身也能带来回报。一些学者将通勤称为“阈限空间”，这个术语虽然浮夸，却捕捉到了某种真实情况：往返工作地点的行程方便人们为一天的工作做好准备或下班后放松。与坐在车里相比，骑自行车和步行等主动出行方式与更高的幸福感相关。
Firms are right not to be indifferent to their employees' journeys to work. And to the extent that commuting time is an expression of individual preferences, firms should pay most attention when those preferences suddenly change. That means one event in particular.
公司不应对员工的通勤漠不关心。就通勤时间表现了个人偏好而言，当偏好突然发生变化的时候，企业最应该注意。这意味着出现了某个特定事件。
A paper co-authored by Mr Mulalic which looked at data for the full working population of Denmark between 2003 and 2013 found that women with a long commute are several times more likely to change jobs when they have a child. (Men are not.) Everyone says they want a shorter commute. New mothers mean it.
由穆拉利奇合著的一篇论文研究了2003年至2013年间丹麦全体工作人口的数据，发现通勤时间长的女性在生育后换工作的可能性比生育前要高出数倍。（男性不是。）大家都说想要更短的通勤时间。只有新妈妈们说到做到。