Source: Wendell Cox Consultancy (2001), www.demographia.com.Average Journey to Work Travel Time, 1990Through history, the time spent commuting has remained relatively
constant, with about 90 minutes per day. This is known as
Marchetti's constant in the name of the physicist who established
the relation. Because of its high level of motorization, the United States has
the lowest average commuting time in the world, around 25 minutes in
1990 (one direction) with a global average in the range of 30
minutes. The commuters of Western Europe and Japan, which are more
dependent
on walking and public transit and in spite of more compact cities, have
longer commuting times. There is thus an inverse relationship between
the level of public transit use and commuting time as passengers tend
to spend more time waiting and transferring within the transit system.
However, the last decade has shown growing commuting times, mainly due
to increasing congestion levels in metropolitan areas.