Do you take the fastest way home? Are you sure? Really?
Gotthard Alte Passstrasse, Wikimedia Commons
I think I take the fastest route to work. I avoid traffic and stoplights, take long straight sections, and make right turns when ever possible. However, I always end up taking a completely different path home. I can’t quite say why I do this, but both seem the quickest possible way to and from work. If one route wins the morning commute, why don’t I follow the same path in reverse every evening?
In a classic study of traversal distance perception, people who walked a path with seven turns rated the path length longer than those who walked a path with only two turns (Sadalla & Magel, 1980). In reality these paths were exactly the same length.
Why is this? Maybe memory biases distance perception. A path with more turns requires storing more information in memory. More information stored for a path may lead to longer distance judgements. Alternatively, effort may play the key role here. Turns require effort, so straight paths with less turns appear shorter. Regardless of which theory is correct, less turns make a path seem shorter.
Thinking back, my morning route into work minimizes turns. My path home also has long straight segments and few turns. A one-way street and my dislike of left turns means these two paths don’t overlap. Maybe I really do take the shortest possible paths, but most likely at least one of my paths isn’t the fastest. It wins because my distance perception is biased.
I’m going to time my routes and report back with what I find.
Do you take the shortest path to and from work? Comment below if you think you’re biased or if you’ve timed your path and know the truth!
Sadalla, E., & Magel, S. (1980). The Perception of Traversed Distance Environment and Behavior, 12 (1), 65-79 DOI: 10.1177/0013916580121005
Having worked in delivery, I can honestly say that when considering the quickest route, path length is one of the least important variables to consider. The most important in general, is minimizing the number of stop lights, stop signs, and number of turns merging into traffic (left turns combined with the above are generally significantly more expensive than right/straight). A trip that averages 10-15 minutes city will be closer to 5 minutes in the dead of night with blinking yellow traffic lights. Factor of a square root 2 (cutting across the grid) is usually the maximum you could expect for a path length optimization, and this is quite rare.
Cars in the city are dominated by time spent accelerating/decelerating. (This is the main difference between city/highway, the reason it will take 10 minutes to get through the 1 mile residential part of the commute, but the highway will average upwards of 1 mile/minute). It’s useful for people to think of turns as being longer than straight paths, because even running is subject to penalties in direction changes.
I also take different routes to and from work: the city roads on the way there, and the highways on the way back. I’m fairly certain the highway route is quicker when the roads are empty, but in the morning, traffic makes the highway a hellish choice, but in the evening traffic is completely smooth. Interestingly, both my routes have the same number of turns, although the highway route has fewer traffic lights.
A more interesting question to me is, why is there traffic in one way in the morning but NOT the other way in the evening? Are the other drivers taking different routes also?
Perhaps the discrepancy with morning traffic v. evening traffic (which I have also noticed) is due to the fact that most people have a definite start time each day at work, but leave work at different times throughout the week.
Maybe more of us are cramming onto the roads to get to work at the exact time every day, but as evening commuters we are spread out over several hours on any given day?
I’m lucky, I walk to work. It’s a brisk 18 minute walk of a bit over 3 km, rising 100 metres on the way home. The direct as-the-crow-flies path is oblique to the street grid so a number of potential paths are possible. I vary paths a bit, often just to change the scenery. If I’m short of time I generally take a route that I assumed is shortest, but on reflection, it might actually be partly chosen to minimise the transverse departures from the direct path. However, this also maximises the number of turns and so allows me to indulge a strategy that appeals to my mathematical side, cribbing a few metres on each leg by j-walkery.
This is quite different to driving where time and flow are more desirable than linear distance, and the sensual qualities of the route are less immediate.
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As a life-long pedestrian commuter, no doubt exists that my commute is by the shortest route; a shorter one existed but now the Pinkertons might arrest me for tres passing on the railroad right of way. But it gets complicated for drivers who must consider the differences between longer but high variance stops (lights) and shorter but absolutely certain stops (signs), or routes where lights are well coordinated in sequence. But generally such commutes merely speak of a low quality life if enough time is spent commuting that such things actually matter.
I know the truth. I tend to always take the path of least resistance. I will take a longer route if it is easier to navigate.
I also share your dislike of left turns. I sometimes find myself taking alternate routes simply so that I avoid having to turn left at green lights. This makes it hard to explain to my husband why it takes me 10 mins. to get milk from a store that is just around the block. (Never mind why I don’t walk there, vs. drive.)
I also tend to avoid having to turn left at stop signs onto busy streets, so will turn right and navigate “back” when I can.
Perhaps driving a standard shift also plays into why I will tend to take a straight highway route, vs. a shorter one with lots of “work” to do.
I’m lazy, in other words..and stress avoidant.
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say great blog!|
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