It Takes 13% of China’s Commuters Over an Hour to Get to Work, Survey Says
Wu Siming
DATE:  Dec 07 2020
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
It Takes 13% of China’s Commuters Over an Hour to Get to Work, Survey Says It Takes 13% of China’s Commuters Over an Hour to Get to Work, Survey Says

(Yicai Global) Dec. 7 -- Over 10 million Chinese commuters spend more than an hour each day getting to work, and then need a further 60 minutes to return home, which is source of huge misery for them, according to a new report.

One of the aims of China’s urban development is for 90 percent of commuters to take less than 45 minutes to get to work, according to a survey by the China Academy of Urban Planning & Design released on Dec. 4. This is a big factor in increasing people’s happiness levels as metropolises and city clusters develop.

At the moment just 76 percent of commuters in the 36 big cities surveyed spend under 45 minutes getting to work, the report said. Of those living in the four mega cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, just 69 percent spent under an hour and a half each day commuting. This is far below the target of 90 percent, the report said.

Those working in Beijing suffered the most with just 58 percent of respondents spending less than 45 minutes on a one-way commute. The average distance they travelled was 11.1 kilometers, 1.8 km more than the average commute for those living in the four megacities.

People find it difficult to live close to their workplace due to the cost of housing, family considerations and the location of children’s schools, the report said. The growing distance between places of employment and places of residence reflects the imbalance between working and private lives in urban areas.

Commuters tend to rely heavily on inner and inter-city rail networks. Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou have the most extensive networks of urban rail transit in the world.

There is still room for improvement in the urban transport systems of Changsha in central Hunan province and Hefei in eastern Anhui province, with 79 percent and 77 percent of residents respectively taking less than 45 minutes to get to work, below the 80 percent average for cities of their size, the report added.

Editor: Kim Taylor

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Keywords:   Commuting Time