Revealed: The Cities With the Worst Commutes

Few things are more universally despised than the commute to work. In fact, studies have found that adding 20 minutes to your commute has the same effect on job satisfaction as taking a 19% pay cut.

But which cities have the longest commutes? Moneyzine.com has analysed data to reveal the best and worst cities for both public transport and driving to work.

Which Cities Have the Best and Worst Commutes Via Public Transport?

The shortest average public transport commute is Vienna, where workers spend 52.38 minutes each day on the city’s well-developed network of trams, trains, buses and subway. But workers in Glasgow (57.5 mins), Brussels (60), Prague (70) and Sofia (75) also have relatively painless daily commutes on public transport - especially compared with the worst cities.

People in Bucharest who opt for public transport can expect to spend 2 hours each day on the bus, trolleybus or trams. While citizens of Chicago (114 mins), New York (105.6), Los Angeles (104) and Paris (104) all spend more than an hour and a half on public transport each day.

Strikingly, 3 out of 5 of the worst public transport commutes are in the USA - where 45% of the population don’t even haveaccessto public transport , and the number of workers using public transport has more than halved in recent decades.

Which Cities Have the Best and Worst Commutes Via Car?

So does that mean the States will fare better when it comes to car commutes, which over two thirds of its workforce opt for?

The short answer is no. All of the best cities to drive to work are in fact European, with Vienna once again topping the list - its average worker taking just 46.24 minutes to commute via car. Following close behind are Madrid (55.2 mins), Sofia (61.24), Munich (64) and Prague (64).

On the flip side, workers in Los Angeles spend over two hours driving to work (121.8 mins), with Barcelona (118.8), Milan (108), London (105) and New York (87) coming close behind. As with the longest public transport locations, these are all notably large, metropolitan cities - suggesting that a longer commute may be the price workers pay to be employed in such places.

This data shows that our choice of commute method has a meaningful impact on the length of the working day - and therefore likely our job satisfaction.

Jonathan Merry, Personal Finance Expert at Moneyzine.com