覺(jué)得騎車(chē)或步行上班太花時(shí)間？你可能想錯(cuò)了

Barely 3 percent of the American work force bikes or walks to work with any frequency, despite the obvious virtues: decreased risks for obesity and diabetes, environmental benefits and lower transportation costs. Ask people why they eschew what’s known as active commuting, as many surveys have, and the primary reason cited is time. Those things take too long, most say.

在美國(guó)，只有3%的人騎自行車(chē)或步行上班(頻率各不相同)，這樣做有明顯的優(yōu)點(diǎn)：能降低肥胖和糖尿病的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，有益于環(huán)境，降低交通成本。然而很多調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)被問(wèn)及為什么不選擇這些所謂的“活躍通勤”方式時(shí)，人們提到的主要因素是時(shí)間。大多數(shù)人表示，這兩種交通方式耗時(shí)太長(zhǎng)。

They’re probably wrong. A new study published in a journal called Transportmetrica A: Transport Science shows that people often overestimate the time required to commute actively, a miscalculation especially common when someone has secured a parking permit near the office.

他們很可能錯(cuò)了。一項(xiàng)發(fā)表在《運(yùn)輸計(jì)量A：運(yùn)輸科學(xué)》期刊(Transportmetrica A: Transport Science)上的新研究表明，人們往往高估了活躍通勤所需的時(shí)間，在辦公室附近擁有停車(chē)許可證的人尤其會(huì)做出錯(cuò)誤估計(jì)。

For the study, researchers at Penn State solicited the school’s faculty, staff and students to complete an extensive series of online questionnaires about their fitness, health, commuting and parking habits, comfort and ability on a bike or as pedestrians, distance from home to their main workplace on campus and how long they thought it would take them to either bike or walk that distance. Only a few of the 505 respondents went by foot or bike; most of them were students. Estimates of commuting times were then compared with the corresponding route times calculated by Google Maps. The researchers independently timed some of the routes by walking or riding them.

為了這項(xiàng)研究，賓夕法尼亞州立大學(xué)的研究人員請(qǐng)求該校的教師、員工和學(xué)生完成一系列廣泛的在線調(diào)查問(wèn)卷，內(nèi)容包括健身、健康、交通和停車(chē)習(xí)慣;騎車(chē)或步行的舒適程度和能力;住處與他們?cè)谛@內(nèi)主要工作地點(diǎn)的距離;以及他們認(rèn)為騎車(chē)或步行到那里所需的時(shí)間。505名受訪者中只有少數(shù)人步行或騎車(chē);其中大多數(shù)是學(xué)生。然后，研究者將受訪者估計(jì)的通勤時(shí)間與谷歌地圖計(jì)算出的相應(yīng)路線用時(shí)進(jìn)行了比較。研究人員還以步行或騎車(chē)的方式對(duì)其中一些路線進(jìn)行了獨(dú)立計(jì)時(shí)。

The survey participants — faculty and staff members above all — proved to be generally poor at guessing active-commuting times. About 90 percent of their estimates were too long by at least 10 minutes. The few assessments close to Google’s were almost always made by riders or walkers. Parking availability and distances affected the estimates. Those with parking permits, a fiercely sought-after campus amenity, tended to overestimate active-commuting times significantly; the closer someone lived to the workplace, the better the guesses. Confidence had an outsize effect, too. The people surveyed, especially women, who had little bicycling experience or who did not feel physically fit thought that active commuting would require considerably more time than the Google calculations.

受訪者，尤其是教職員工，在估算活躍通勤用時(shí)方面大都很糟。他們估計(jì)的時(shí)間約有90%都至少超過(guò)10分鐘。也有少數(shù)人給出了與谷歌用時(shí)接近的估計(jì)，他們幾乎都是騎車(chē)者或步行者。停車(chē)權(quán)和距離對(duì)估計(jì)有所影響。有停車(chē)證的人往往會(huì)大大高估活躍通勤的用時(shí)——停車(chē)證是一項(xiàng)很吃香的校園福利。住得離工作地點(diǎn)越近的人猜得越準(zhǔn)。信心也會(huì)產(chǎn)生巨大影響。沒(méi)有騎車(chē)經(jīng)驗(yàn)或覺(jué)得身體不適的受訪者，尤其是女性，對(duì)活躍通勤的用時(shí)的估計(jì)大大高于谷歌的計(jì)算。

The study is limited, of course, because it relies on an insular, self-selected group of respondents to provide information about themselves, a topic on which people can be surprisingly unreliable. The published results also did not delve into such pressing active-commuting concerns as hygiene, showers or the logistics of carrying changes of clothes. But the study’s results do indicate that time may be less of a barrier to active commuting than many might anticipate, says Melissa Bopp, an associate professor of kinesiology at Penn State and the study’s senior author.

當(dāng)然，這項(xiàng)研究具有局限性，因?yàn)樗蕾?lài)的是孤立的、自選的調(diào)查對(duì)象群體，并要求他們提供關(guān)于自己的信息，人們對(duì)自己的判斷可能會(huì)非常不可靠。公布的研究結(jié)果也沒(méi)有深入研究活躍通勤的一些主要顧慮，比如衛(wèi)生、淋浴或攜帶換洗衣物等問(wèn)題。但該研究的高級(jí)作者、賓夕法尼亞州立大學(xué)的運(yùn)動(dòng)機(jī)能學(xué)副教授梅莉莎·博普(Melissa Bopp)表示，這項(xiàng)研究結(jié)果確實(shí)表明，與許多人的預(yù)期不同，時(shí)間對(duì)活躍通勤的阻礙并不是很大。

“I’d urge anyone who is considering biking or walking to work to do a test run,” she says, perhaps on a weekend (although the traffic patterns will be different from those during the week). Ask colleagues for route suggestions. “Google is good at finding bike paths,” she says, but it emphasizes brevity and directness over scenery for walkers.

她表示，“我會(huì)敦促那些考慮騎車(chē)或步行上班的人進(jìn)行一次試騎或試走”，也許是在周末(盡管周末的交通情況可能與工作日不同)。可以向同事征求路線建議。她表示，“谷歌很擅長(zhǎng)尋找騎行路線”，但谷歌偏重簡(jiǎn)潔和直接，不太關(guān)注步行者看到的風(fēng)景。