Commuting between home and work can interfere with work-life balance to the point of causing psychological distress for workers, particularly if they use public transportation.
Cars appear to be the mode of transportation that best protects mental health, even ahead of active transportation such as cycling or walking.
These are the surprising conclusions reached by researcher Annie Barreck, who completed her doctoral thesis on this topic at l’Université de Montréal’s School of Industrial Relations last year and has recently published a study in the Journal of Transport & Health.
“I wondered whether (…) commuting itself could cause difficulties in balancing work and family life, which could then explain why workers experience psychological distress related to commuting, thus adding to the stress factors already present in the workplace,” says Barreck, who conducted her research under the supervision of Professor Alain Marchand.
The researcher first noted that commute length is the main determining factor: the more time workers spend commuting, she explained, the more they report work-family conflicts, and the greater their mental health is affected, reporting more symptoms of psychological distress such as anxiety, loss of interest, frustration, or even headaches.
A shorter commute is not necessarily the solution, as Barreck determined that a burnout begins to set in after only 20 minutes.
According to Statistics Canada data cited by the researcher, the average commute time for Canadians is 44 minutes by car, compared to 53 minutes by public transit and 26 minutes by active transportation. For nearly 10 per cent of workers, commutes exceed 60 minutes. And the trend is clearly on the rise.
The fact that public transit trips are the longest, means that they leave the least amount of time for work, social, and family activities, added Barreck, which can contribute to psychological distress.
The Canada-wide data in Barreck’s study comes from the Longitudinal Study of the Observatory on Health and Well-Being at Work, conducted among 1,830 employees from 65 diverse workplaces. The data was collected between 2019 and 2020.
Better by car
Another interesting thought is that cars appear to be a protective factor, possibly because using them provides a certain sense of control rather than being at the hands of unreliable public transportation.
Currently, more that half of Canadian workers commute by car, compared to 40 per cent by public transit, and 8 per cent by active modes of transportation such as walking or cycling. Even these modes of transportation do not protect commuters against deteriorating mental health, Barreck said.
“My study shows that using public transportation, compared to driving, leads to more work-life balance difficulties and, consequently, more symptoms of psychological distress,” the researcher summarized.
All these findings contradict the firmly established conventional wisdom that it is better, at least for mental health, to travel by public transport or bicycle than to face rush hour traffic in a car.
These assumptions are even reflected in scientific literature, Barreck points out, where it is generally assumed that public transportation is less stressful than traveling by car, and that active transportation is best.
“Compared to driving, public transit was also indirectly associated with greater psychological distress due to more work-family conflict,” she said. Active transportation was directly associated with greater psychological distress, but not with either direction of work-family conflict.
The association between psychological distress and public transportation use is explicitly related to work-life balance, Barreck said.
Even though it may seem, on the surface, that using public transportation would be less stressful, “in reality, workers have less control over their commute than they do when driving,” she said.
“Public transportation may be less predictable; there may be stops, delays, and so on,” explained Barreck, who did not seek to determine in her study whether public transportation users’ sense of safety could contribute to their psychological distress.
Barreck points out that it is important to remember that public transit users are not a homogeneous group. The experience of a single 40-year-old who lives and works in Montreal, and has the option of remotely working will likely be different from that of a single mother of three school-aged children who works full-time in Montreal but lives in Boucherville.
“The results of this study suggest adopting a broader perspective on commuting, mental health at work, and work-family issues in order to fully recognize the complexity of commuting on employee health and well-being,” Barreck said.
Understanding this complexity, she adds, “could promote sustainable development, including workplace interventions aimed at preventing mental health and family problems by improving worker mobility.”
If using public transportation is associated with greater difficulties in balancing work and family life, it becomes essential to involve workplaces and implement measures such as policies related to work-life balance or the possibility of flexible working hours.
“These are examples of policies that can be extremely important in the workplace, which will have an impact not only on worker mobility, because workers may choose to use public transportation more if these policies are implemented, but also because they will subsequently have far fewer mental health problems,” said Barreck.
– This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
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