[Griffinsauce]

I'm currently experiencing the same calm as when I lived a 4-minute tram ride from work. (My current job is over an hour away)

The soul killing of commuting is underrated. Just the sheer amount of time lost in your day is huge and that loss builds up over time.

And that's not even counting increased health problems, sleeping less (well), increased stress from anxiety or just basic public transport bullshit.

I used to say I didn't mind my daily ~2.5 hours in trains and trams. Right now I will fight _hard_ to keep it out of my life.

[toyg]

Some of this could be fixed very easily by employers by widening their range of office hours. Commuting times grow exponentially when everyone has to do it at the same time.

When I was commuting in a car, the exact same path would take me 45m to an hour at peak time, and 15m off-peak. Just by pushing forward the starting time by about an hour, I saved loads of time and aggravation. This applies to public-transport commuters too: the experience of squeezing into an overcrowded carriage where you could die standing vs sitting comfortably and reading a book in a mid-morning train, is night and day.

Employers should just agree that the actual hours where absolute overlap is required, are about 5-6 per day. Leave people free to attach the remaining 2-3 at whichever end they prefer, or even do them from home (so you commute calmly and then just end the day from home). It won’t solve everything (schools remain obtuse bottlenecks with their inflexible schedules) but it would go a long way towards removing stress from commuting.

[Griffinsauce]

Perhaps, though peak/off-peak makes no difference in time for me. It would reduce the busyness but I was generally able to sit anyway. Even then, I am _forced_ to sit and read (/scroll) for that amount of time a day, at set times while I could be doing things that are far better for my mental and physical health. (or just more fun, fun is underrated these days)

[loloquwowndueo]

There are some children for whom the rigid nature of school schedules actually provides structure which makes them less stressed out :)

[linspace]

You are right, actually not only for children. But also there is perfect synchronization between the first day of school and the first big traffic jam, at least where I live.

[toyg]

I don’t particularly disagree, but there are still thtings that could be done, e.g. different schools could use meaningfully-different times.