The daily commute has long been one of the greatest sources of frustration for workers. With the average worker clocking up nearly 8,000 miles per year, crowding and delays on public transport and an increasingly choked road network, there’s little wonder that for many people the morning trip to work is the low point of their day.
Although there has been much news coverage of the vexations contended with by rail passengers, new research by OSV, the UK’s best independent vehicle supply professionals, has revealed that road delays exceed public transport delays by a massive 20%, meaning that motorists are now spending approximately four years of their life in their car commuting to work.
As if that figure wasn’t enough to put a dampener on anyone’s day, OSV have released the further revelation that workers without an allocated business parking space have to add an additional 20 minutes to their commute time daily, simply to find a place to park their car. That’s the equivalent of two full days a year, or 110 days throughout the average career.
In 2014 The Telegraph reported that Britain had run out of parking spaces, with the number of motorists far exceeding the number of available car parks. With this mind one can hardly blame the 15% of drivers who admitted to parking in residential streets around their workplaces. Although the most common reason given for this was to avoid paying for parking, for many they simply couldn’t find any other option. Of those who admitted to parking where they strictly speaking shouldn’t, nearly a fifth (19%) had received parking fines in the region of £50-100 in the last 12 months, while more than a third (37%) said that they had received abuse or been on the receiving end of negative behaviour from residents who had returned home only to find that their own parking space had been filled by a commuter.
OSV joint-company director, Andrew Kirkley, comments: ‘There are very few people who don’t have to commute to work and few of us object to doing it, but it’s depressing how much time is wasted due to delays, both on the road and finding a place to park. Imagine how much more productive and happier we could all be if we could use the wasted hours we spend queuing on gridlocked roads or circling multi-storeys looking for spaces, catching up on lost sleep, exercising, spending time with our families, or even at work, getting jobs done.
‘The number of drivers in the UK has increased exponentially in the last 50 years, with more than 28?million vehicles now on the roads. Unfortunately, the relevant infrastructure hasn’t seen corresponding changes, leaving many towns and cities at a standstill.
‘The annual hours lost thanks to common road delays really add up, resulting in 34 hours spent stuck in traffic every year. What an incredible waste of time. I’d like to think that the Government is looking into ways of resolving the situation.’
