Pandemic Responses: Are office-goers actually missing the commute?

He decided to use it to tally up the hours he would have spent commuting to his job at an investment bank were it not for the pandemic. He came up with a conservative 300 hours, not accounting for delays and other transit snafus.

That’s 300 hours not spent waiting on the platform in Glen Ridge, N.J., for New Jersey Transit; hours not spent sitting on a commuter train; and hours not spent walking from Penn Station to his office in 

Midtown. But rather than feel overjoyed to realize that the pandemic handed him back 12 and a half days of his life, he felt wistful. It turns out, he misses the commute.

“The first thought was, ‘Oh, wow, this as an amazing amount of hours,’” said Rush, 57, who was laid off from his job in June, and so has no immediate prospects of restarting the commute. “But then it’s, ‘Oh wait, it’s the people you say good morning to and say have a nice weekend to, and all the other things that are the dedicated time on the train,’ ” he said, adding, “It’s your time.”

Of all the rituals lost to the pandemic, it’s hard to imagine that the daily commute would be one that people would mourn. It’s an activity usually measured in inconveniences. The length and ease of a ride to the office is often a determining factor in choosing where to live. (What listing doesn’t boast about the nearest train or subway station?) It’s hard to imagine that anyone would prize delays, crowds and time lost idling in tunnels. And yet, some people do. After all the months spent working from home, these housebound workers miss their daily ride. Don a pair of rose-coloured glasses, and memories of life as a straphanger may brighten. Some nostalgic commuters long for the hard break between work and home that a commute provided — the ‘Honey, I’m home’ moment. Others miss the dedicated hour of personal time, a respite from calls and other interruptions with little to do but be in the moment. When else can you listen to a podcast from end to end or get through a New Yorker article in one sitting? For those who biked, walked or even jogged to work, the pandemic has stripped them of built-in workout time.

Part of the appeal is the uniqueness of the New York commute, one where most workers arrive at the office by bus, subway or train. A city commute is a distinctly social one. Sure, there are better ways to 

socialize than to squeeze against strangers on a crowded train, but the daily experience puts you in the thick of the city’s rhythm and provides uninterrupted time to people-watch, one of the little pleasures of living in a crowded metropolis. Lose that experience, and you may feel adrift at home.

An hour spent on a train or bus “is one of the main times that we’re really exposed to the thrum and buzz of city life,” said David Bissell, an associate professor at the school of geography at the University of Melbourne and the author of “Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities.” It’s “where we encounter all manner of people outside of the relatively small circles that form our social lives.”

Vanessa Connelly, 42, a vice president of sales for Brown Harris Stevens Development Marketing, used to complain about her commute from South Slope to Midtown. But after spending seven months at home with her family, she misses the ritual of getting the children off to school and heading to the office. “There was always this moment, specifically about the train. It really was a place where you were underground, you kind of have this pause. I can focus,” she said.