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Spending 50 minutes walking to work is too much for young workers
By Wang Yong |
June 8, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
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ON most week days, I walk about 50 minutes from home to the office to the surprise of many of my younger colleagues who deem it a daunting task to walk that long.
Some of them choose to drive or take a bus, which is not unreasonable in an ever-sprawling city like Shanghai. But on average, they spend no less time than me on the road as they often get stuck in the middle of nowhere in an ever more crowded city.
Forty-seven minutes - that's the average time from home to the office in Shanghai. It takes 52 minutes in Beijing and 48 minutes in Guangzhou - all according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which announced the findings last Saturday.
Compared with many of my colleagues stuck in a car or a bus and possibly caught up in daily "road rage," I'm somehow luckier, except that I also have to inhale a hell lot of car emissions almost every morning.
The bigger the city, the slower the traffic. What an irony of urbanization as we see it today.
When a car travels as slowly as two legs can propel it, the solution is of course to cut the number of cars because you can't forever increase the size of a city.
But the reverse is truer in China today, and that's why we spend more time on the road than most other nations, which have begun to reflect on the stupidity of a life on wheels.
Some of them choose to drive or take a bus, which is not unreasonable in an ever-sprawling city like Shanghai. But on average, they spend no less time than me on the road as they often get stuck in the middle of nowhere in an ever more crowded city.
Forty-seven minutes - that's the average time from home to the office in Shanghai. It takes 52 minutes in Beijing and 48 minutes in Guangzhou - all according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which announced the findings last Saturday.
Compared with many of my colleagues stuck in a car or a bus and possibly caught up in daily "road rage," I'm somehow luckier, except that I also have to inhale a hell lot of car emissions almost every morning.
The bigger the city, the slower the traffic. What an irony of urbanization as we see it today.
When a car travels as slowly as two legs can propel it, the solution is of course to cut the number of cars because you can't forever increase the size of a city.
But the reverse is truer in China today, and that's why we spend more time on the road than most other nations, which have begun to reflect on the stupidity of a life on wheels.
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