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“Turn on the radio, bust out a song”: the experience of driving to work

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Abstract

Though driving to and from work has become a prevalent experience in the lives of individuals in every metropolitan region in the US, much remains to be learned about the activity from the perspective of the drivers. To increase our understanding of the motivation for certain travel behaviors, we must first know something about what those drivers experience. The existing literature explains much, but the application of new methodologies could improve our ability to explain the willingness of individuals to choose to drive through increasingly congested road networks. The results of this study of oral histories of 12 women commuters underscore the idea that commute should be seen as a set of subjective behaviors that contradict some existing assumptions about why individuals commute.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to express his sincerest thanks to Robert Marans, David Sawicki, Patricia Mokhtarian, and two anonymous reviewers for their time, patience, and extremely helpful comments. All remaining errors are entirely the author’s own.

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  1. Department of Community and Regional Planning, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50010, USA

    Carlton Basmajian

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Basmajian, C. “Turn on the radio, bust out a song”: the experience of driving to work. Transportation 37, 59–84 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-009-9220-1

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