Transportation: Awareness
Understand what transportation means, what's possible, and where you stand. About 15 minutes.
How you get around each day is one of those things most people accept as fixed rather than actively design. Yet transportation consumes a significant share of both your time and money, and the choices you make about it affect your health, stress levels, and overall quality of life.
Average commute times range from 40 to 80 minutes per day, and transportation is typically the second-largest household expense after housing. Many people spend 15 – 20% of their income on getting around.
The mode you choose matters more than you might expect. Research consistently shows that active commuters – walkers and cyclists – report the highest satisfaction, while long car and public transit commutes generate the lowest. Switching from car travel to active travel shows significant positive effects on psychological wellbeing.
Unlike many life areas, transportation can often be substantially improved through a single decision: moving closer to work, changing commute mode, or restructuring errand patterns. Few other changes deliver such a large daily quality-of-life improvement for a one-off effort.
People approach transportation for different reasons. This site scores every transportation intervention across three core values. Later, you'll set your own weighting across these three values, and the site will rank interventions by how well they deliver on the things you actually care about.
Efficiency
Minimising the time, money, and cognitive effort spent on transportation. People who lean towards this value treat transportation as a resource to optimise – reducing unnecessary trips, batching errands, choosing modes that maximise productive or enjoyable use of travel time, and structuring their lives to minimise wasted transit.
Comfort
The physical and psychological experience of your daily transportation – pleasant, stress-free, and compatible with your preferences. People who lean towards this value invest in making the journey itself enjoyable: vehicle quality, commute environment, protection from weather, and the overall pleasantness of their travel experience.
Safety
Minimising the risk of injury, accident, or incident during transportation. People who lean towards this value make travel decisions based on risk reduction: vehicle safety features, route selection, defensive driving or cycling practices, and choosing modes with strong safety records.
The Top 0.1% band represents roughly 1 in 1,000 people. To give you a sense of what that looks like for each transportation value:
Chris Boardman is an Olympic gold medallist cyclist who became Greater Manchester's cycling and walking commissioner. He commutes by bike, uses public transport, and has structured his own daily travel around efficiency rather than speed. His advocacy for active transport infrastructure is grounded in his personal practice – he has said he does not own a car and designs his life around not needing one.
Doug DeMuro has built a career around evaluating the comfort and experience of vehicles across every price range. He owns and has personally tested hundreds of cars, and his detailed reviews focus heavily on ride quality, cabin environment, and the day-to-day experience of living with a vehicle. His approach treats every journey as an experience worth optimising.
Tiff Needell is a former racing driver and long-time motoring presenter who has spent decades teaching advanced driving techniques to the public. His work on defensive and high-performance driving combines professional-level vehicle control with an emphasis on hazard anticipation and safe road behaviour, demonstrated across thousands of hours of on-road instruction.
Awareness means knowing your starting point. Answer each question below – some you might know off the top of your head, others might take a few minutes to reflect on.
Efficiency
Comfort
Safety
Your estimated position
Percentiles are estimates based on published population data on transportation behaviour among adults. All items in this area are scored.
You now understand why transportation matters, what different people get out of it, what's achievable, and where you currently stand. The final step is to set your personal value weightings and see which interventions are the best fit for you.
On the interventions page, adjust the sliders to reflect how much you care about efficiency, comfort, and safety. The table will re-rank interventions to match your priorities.
Awareness assessment complete
You've built your foundation in Transportation. Your self-assessment and value weightings are saved.
View Your Interventions