If you hate your commute, it's probably because of the neighborhood where your office is, not the one where you actually live.
SSRN · March 16, 2026 · 6418947
Why it matters
Urban planning often focuses on making residential areas 'commute-friendly' to improve worker wellbeing. However, this research shows that the amenities and design of the destination (the workplace neighborhood) are the only environmental factors that actually move the needle on satisfaction, making the 'start' of the trip statistically irrelevant to how people feel about their journey.
From the abstract
Commute satisfaction is an important dimension of subjective wellbeing (SWB) and a potential lever for encouraging sustainable travel behavior. Prior research has examined mode-based satisfaction differences and, more recently, mismatches between preferred and actual commute conditions. However, mode and time dissonance have rarely been examined together, and the role of alternative mode access remains underexplored. Using survey data (n = 942) from fifteen U.S. East Coast states, this study exa