4 REMB THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020Harry Rush recently had some time on his
hands because, let’s be honest, who does-
n’t? He decided to use it to tally up the hours
he would have spent commuting to his job
as an investment banker 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 com-
muter 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 12½
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 Mr.
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 inconven-
iences. The length and ease of a ride to the
office is often a determining factor in choos-
ing where to live. (What listing doesn’t
boast about the nearest train or subway sta-
tion?) 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-colored 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 person-
al time, a respite from calls and other inter-
ruptions with little to do but be in the mo-
ment. 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 work-
ers 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 pro-
vides 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 Mel-
bourne and the author of “Transit Life: How
Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities.”
It’s “where we encounter all manner of peo-
ple outside of the relatively small circles
that form our social lives.”
Vanessa Connelly, 42, a vice president for
sales at Brown Harris Stevens Develop-ment Marketing, used to complain about
her commute from South Slope, Brooklyn,
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 al-
ways this moment, specifically about the
train,” she said. “It really was a place where
you were underground, you kind of have
this pause. I can focus.”
Surrounded by strangers, she could melt
into the crowd and absorb the energy of the
city. “I just miss the people, and that feels
strange to say,” she said. “It’s waiting in line
to go up the escalator. All these things that
used to be frustrating. I miss the crowds.”
When work and home collapse into one,
you lose not only the connection to a wider
world, but also the mental signposts that
signal a beginning and an end to the day. If
you can roll out of bed and already be at the
office, work never stops. Likewise, if youcan’t close the door on a pile of laundry wait-
ing to be folded, or send the children off to
school for the day, it’s hard to mentally set
aside household duties.
A study published in July by the National
Bureau of Economic Research looked at
worker activity during the pandemic and
found that the workday lasted 48.5 minutes
longer, workers sent 1.4 more emails a day,
and they had more frequent, albeit shorter,
meetings than before. The days just seem to
stretch out.
“That blurring of the distinction between
home and work life really makes it difficult
to create hard stops for yourself,” said Evan
DeFilippis, a doctoral candidate in organi-
zational behavior at Harvard Business
School and the first author on the study.
“You end up just doing a lot of work over
longer periods of time because you just
don’t have clear guidelines anymore.”
Jonathan Stevens, who is 28 and works
for a health care technology start-up, has
seen the rhythm of his workday change now
that he no longer takes the subway from his
apartment in Harlem to his office in the fi-
nancial district. The daily 45-minute ride
gave him time to slowly wake up, and the
walk from the train to the office provided a
few minutes to drink a cup of coffee and
gather his thoughts. On the ride home, he
had quiet time to text his mother in Chicago.
“I definitely have compressed that mental
readiness window,” he said.
Since Labor Day, when his office re-
opened, Mr. Stevens has been going into
work once a week. But the commute is not
the same as it was. Rather than relax and
listen to music, he’s on guard, watching out
for how many people board the train at each
station, making sure he’s keeping a safe dis-
tance from those around him. “I’m height-
ened in my awareness,” he said. “I can’t
tune out in the same way that I used to. It
feels familiar, but at the same time foreign.”
Some commuters have found ways to im-
provise. Scott Cooke, a 45-year-old publicist
who lives on Avenue B, used to bike to his
office in Chelsea. The 20-minute ride was
the highlight of his day. He got Covid-19 in
mid-March and didn’t leave his apartment
for a month. There are still days when he
doesn’t go out at all, “which is so disturb-
ing,” he said. And he finds his workday
starts “before I even get started,” he said.
“I’ll grab the laptop while I’m drinking cof-
fee.”
With little to do outside, he has been forc-
ing himself to go out on rides just to break
up the monotony. “I’ll take a faux com-
mute,” he said. After work, and before the
sun sets, “I’ll ride over the Williamsburg
Bridge. I actually ride with purpose, and
then I’m like, ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’ ”The Train Was So Packed. Those Were the Days. (Sigh.)
Many long for the clear
boundaries between home and
work that a commute created.
TRISHA KRAUSS‘It’s waiting in line to
go up the escalator. All
these things that used
to be frustrating. I miss
the crowds.’By RONDA KAYSENRIGHT AT HOME.