Commuter Science

Welcome, visitor, to this taste of Commuter Science. The Introduction and Table of Contents are freely available to all, while individual chapters are currently password protected. Want to read more? Please drop a note to bill@wdcohen.com. Thank you, and enjoy!

Hardly anyone, let alone a harried commuter, ever reads Prefaces any more. However, since Prefaces usually contain some of the most important information for the reader, I have incorporated the Preface into the Introduction. So, if you are one of those rare legitimate Preface readers and are upset because you can't find one, please accept my apology and proceed with the knowledge that you are not missing anything.

How do you commute to Manhattan for 20 years and survive? The question has challenged generations but has never before been subjected to the scientific approach.

In teaching cell biology and directing biological research for many years at Hunter College, City University of New York, my job -- like millions of others -- required a daily commute from my home in New Jersey to work in Manhattan. And being a scientist by training, while I observed and experimented in the lab, over the course of 20 years I also observed and experimented with my daily commute on buses and subways.

The result is this book, recounting and analyzing the good and bad, the joyful and the depressing. Ideas were formed in transit and detailed notes were actually taken en route. Some observations are peculiar to a particular time or place, but all should strike chords of familiarity to the harried commuter. The observations, experiments and conclusions are presented, of course, in commuter-sized chunks, for easier reading in bus shelters or along the way.

Before laboratory experiments can begin, however, we must define our terms and variables. The same goes for the observations and terms in this book. The word "commuter" has the same root as "commutator" -- an electrical device that produces a reversal of electrical direction. "Commuter" has a similar meaning: a biological device that goes forth from home to a place of work, then later reverses direction. However, anyone who takes a day trip away from home and then back reverses direction. The commuting hallmark is, rather, the daily repetition of the act. Repetition? The word immediately conjures up mostly negative synonyms, like boredom, hassle, routine, wasted time, and fatigue. But repetition also implies practice, and practice can lead to valuable knowledge and useful skills for mastering the challenge. Not only that, but experiences during a commute are sometimes even interesting from a scientific point of view.

A good experiment has limited variables, and for the purposes of Commuter Science we shall be limited to what I call real commuting. This is the most public of public transportation: buses, subways, and feet. Auto commuters, don't talk to me about your hassles with traffic. Having also done that for more than 15 years I can tell you that there is no comparison. Sitting in the privacy of one's own car in a comfortable seat with your radio or CD on and your personal refreshment stand is not real commuting, even if there is a real traffic jam. No: What we are talking about here is paring down commuting to its purest, most harrowing metropolitan form.

This book is about Big Apple commuting, and is presented as slices of daily life. If life were like a cake, this would be about slices of cake, but commuter life is definitely no piece of cake. Hardly anyone actually enjoys commuting, and for most it is a necessary evil that is tolerated and erased -- indeed, frequently totally excluded from daily memory.

But what's the cost of this exclusion? Some may think of a commute as a minor, transitory moment in daily life, but consider it scientifically: Assuming eight hours of work and eight hours of sleep each workday, and a modest one-hour commute each way, the percentage of the total workweek spent commuting is about 8%. Now consider the percentage of weekday "free time" (non-sleep, non-work) hours it consumes: two out of the remaining eight hours, or 25%. In other words, one-fourth of a typical commuter's free time during the workweek is spent commuting! That's a big slice.

In reflecting on life's major activities, of which commuting now is proven to be one, one must have philosophy as well as science. Waiting for the bus one particular a.m., for yet one more trek into The City, I found myself examining the philosophical meaning of the commute. The bus arrives, I get on, and there before me is one of those large metal button pins with a message on it. Attached to the bus driver's key ring, it hangs strategically atop his ticket machine for easy reading by all who enter. This button obviously reflects the driver's opinion of his own daily chores, and it is understandable. He, after all, has to deal with us, the great masses of the bored, bedraggled, and harried who rarely say hello, much less thank him for skillful services rendered under difficult circumstances. However, the message seems remarkably appropriate to both sides, and, pondering its implications, I cannot think of a more concise description to apply to the commute. It reads: "SAME SHIT -- DIFFERENT DAY!" And yet, in the stark truth of this statement, there resides the element of humor that makes our tasks tolerable.

Speaking of humor as a survival tool, whereas many commuters pass time doing crosswords and other newspaper puzzles, I went astray early on and instead took up limerick writing. As in "There once was a lass from Nantucket...." The objective of the limericks scattered among these pages is humor, though not the typically gross variety that you were probably thinking of. No, those presented here permit the expression of anger, fear, and frustration in a cathartic manner. The subject demanding catharsis? Commuting, of course. So, here is a starter:

Finally, no book is written without considerable help from others. I wish to thank all of my family members for criticism and technical assistance. My daughter Sarah, in particular, did an enormous amount of work in the editing and organization of the book. My son's experience with physics and humor writing shaped several chapters. And my wife, Dr. Marion Cohen, has a love of nature and a breadth of knowledge that helped enormously. Thanks also to Allison Diette RN and Tina for assistance in typing during revision of the text.