Surviving commuting …or ‘Life on the 7.40 from Peckham’

A few Service leavers will have experienced commuting. Grizzled veterans of the Ministry of Defence, people electing to live in their own houses and travel to work, and a few others will be familiar with the routine. But a surprising number may find it a completely new experience – and one they may try to avoid in ignorance of its many advantages.

The thought of a journey to work – by car, train or bus – of more than a few minutes may strike a note of horror for people who have walked, run or cycled to the ship, unit or flight in the past. Some people may be so concerned at the prospect that they rule themselves out of jobs for which they might be ideal because they do not want to work in a city centre.

But city centres are where most jobs are. Cities are places in which most workers from somewhere else travel to their offices, factories, studios or wherever, and in which the streets are either deserted or the scene of very different activities outside working hours. Most people work in cities, and anyone ruling themselves out of the prospect of commuting is considerably narrowing their job search.

Clearly, one strategy for people who have not yet put down roots is to find the right job and then to find accommodation close enough to it to avoid commuting. That will probably involve living in a town or city – which is not everybody’s ideal – and property prices or rents are likely to limit the choice of what can be obtained. In any case, urban living is often noisy, cramped, polluted, greatly affected by neighbours’ behaviour, and probably more likely to suffer from crime.

Those individuals who elect to work from home, and find an occupation that allows them to do so, may well seem fortunate. However, they face another set of challenges – separating work from home time, domestic distractions when the boring chores await in the office, dual use of the same accommodation, and other issues that bubble to the surface when you are sharing the same space as your family 24/7.

For those for whom this is not a sensible option, the only solution is to accept (and even try to enjoy) travel to the workplace. Commuting is not all bad. You get away from your work. You return daily (or sometimes weekly) to your own home. You can breathe smoke-free air and you can hopefully avoid the worst of the traffic noise. Maybe the local tearaways will be better behaved than their city cousins and empty your dustbin on the street only every other week.

If you work in a major city or town, you may have the choice of transport to take you to and fro. If not, car or motorbike may be the answer. For some, the excuse to get new wheels – of either variety – will be most welcome. And this leads to the first secret of happy commuting: enjoy it. If you can choose your route, select different ones and learn the rat-runs for those days when traffic is jammed on the main roads. Find something productive to do with your time. This may be more difficult for drivers than for passengers but a language CD or an interesting audio-book makes maximum use of downtime.

For those using public transport, there is no excuse. All around the commuter there are some people who are using their time profitably, and others who are not. To some extent this depends on your view of work. Is it something that you do during the time that your employer pays you to do it? Or is it something that interests you sufficiently to do that little bit extra?

The person working just for the money will tend to doze, read the paper, do a crossword, listen to music or just switch off during the journey to work. Those people with a real interest in their work and their life will probably use the time more profitably. The chance to chill may not be a bad thing, but many Service leavers may find it hard to do for two hours a day, every day. In any case, each day’s commuting time is a deduction from whatever ration you have for your total time on this planet so you may as well make the most of it.

However, there is one thing that every commuter needs to factor in to their life/work equation, and that is the cost. For people commuting, say, 30 miles into London, the annual cost of a season ticket and station parking may well come to around £4,000. And that is out of taxed income; there is no tax break for commuting costs, so £4,000 rapidly escalates to around £6,000 in gross wages. This is a significant sum, and we have not even considered transport to and from stations at both ends of the journey. One-car families may have to invest in another vehicle, and a pleasant journey in summer (even this year’s rainier-than-usual one) can become a treacherous, icy, cold, wet ordeal in January.

So, commuting may not be the bogey that many people who have never tried it imagine. It can be a positive, enriching experience if you choose to make it one. It is certainly not such an evil that an otherwise very satisfactory job is declined because it involves a journey to work. Millions of British people do it every day, and moan about it. But there is a truism which says that people generally are not content unless they have something to moan about. Commuting is a popular target, but this should not be confused with the reality, which is that – like everything else in life – it has its pros and cons. The trick is to maximise the positive aspects and minimise the negative ones. Just like everything else in life, really.