Should your daily commute be counted as work?

[whole diary]

[stuving]

Retail businesses have an obvious reason to open near their competitors - that's where potential customers go. That effect may be losing its force as retail loses out to on-line, but for restaurants it should still apply. Outside retail similar critical mass effects happen too. Businesses that interact with like or different specialists may want to be close to them, as face-to-face meetings haven't gone out of fashion.

I think that centripetal force has got stronger as employment - and employees - have got more specialised. Your new business needs a pool of suitable labour, and they (HR^▸ (Human Resources) and bosses)  have got awfully picky of late. Of course the availability of jobs also attracts that pool pf labour, and the more subdivisions of "labour" there are the bigger the critical mass of both employers and employees. 

It is interesting to look at the 1965 report "A Railway Plan for London" (from the Railways Archive). It includes the famous proposal to close Paddington suburban services entirely, for want of passengers, so as to free up a second track pair for "outer suburban" ones. That comes out of their analysis of how housing has shifted from inner London to suburbs and then further out (to those misnamed "outer suburbs"). It comments on the planning restrictions on new offices in the centre (cf. LOB above), and especially close to railway terminals, and says: "... it would be better if these additional jobs were as close as possible to the main line terminals, or even on top of them." But overall it is striking how the issues being addressed now are the same as they were then.

[LiskeardRich]

There surely comes a point when the commute time becomes so much that working from home, for perhaps just some of the week, is the less stressful, time consuming and expensive answer. After all, is working from your house any less practical or efficient than working from a train or bus?

I go to work for the social aspect as do many other single parents I know. I’m probably paying as much in childcAre and lost benefits as I earn! I’d struggle to work from home anyway, quite difficult driving a bus round the living room!

[Thatcham Crossing]

Back in the real world, working from home finds little support among both employees and employers in most industries.

Many employers feel that working from home is not "real work" if they can not see the worker at a desk.

Many employees fear that if THEY can work from home, that perhaps the work could be done by someone in Calcutta working from their home, for perhaps 10% of the salary.

With respect, I think you're "real world" view comes from a different age (or at least half a generation, anyway)

I work from home, from the office, from Customer sites (all over the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)) and my employer doesn't really care where I am as long as the work gets done and I am contactable.

BTW^▸ ('by the way'), my employer employs around 10,000 people in the Bangalore area alone, and the competition for good people out there has been driving salaries up for some years now.

I would also, genuinely, say that I am more productive at home - although (as others have said) I enjoy the social interaction of going to the office, and also completely agree with what eightonedee said. It's a matter of finding the right balance.

[Wizard]

I wonder if train drivers will be able to work from home one day.

Sooner than you think with the introduction of driverless trains.

I think we are some way from that point just yet. Network Rail had a new semaphore signal commissioned at Worcester earlier this year.