Cubicle Commute Experiment

Since I've been pretty lazy about updating anything on this blog for about a year now, I thought it might be time to try something new here. I've had an idea floating around in my head for a while that I thought would be cool to experiment, but I wasn't sure if I should just keep it to myself, or if I should put it up on the blog and let everyone else see my results. Not wanting to be called a nerd by my wife and co-workers, I figure by putting it on the blog, I will be sharing my experiment with the world and will only enhace the quality of life for people that work in downtown Calgary, and will be less of a nerd for sharing it than for keeping it to myself.

So here is my experiment idea...

I am going to record the time it takes for me to commute to and from work each day and document it in a spreadsheet. I think the process will be interesting as somedays I am able to get to work fairly quickly, and other days the delays on the LRT are significant.

I live in the extreme south end of Calgary (194th Avenue south) and have to commute to the center of the city to work. Currently my commute to work is composed of several elements, any of which could cause a delay in the time it takes for me to get to work. I walk from my house about 5 minute to get to the bus stop. The bus then takes me to the south LRT station (LRT is the light rail transit system operating in Calgary). The train then takes me to the downtown core, where I walk a couple blocks to my building.

My initial plan is to start my stopwatch when I leave my house, and stop it when I get to my cubicle. By recording the time it takes to commute, and then analyzing the data, I may be able to see trends in the commute time that I can then take advantage of. It will also provide data for anyone reading this blog and also commutes from the south end of the city.

If it works out well, and I can get into the habit of starting and stopping the watch everyday, I may try to expand the experiment and start segmenting the commute in the future. I may try timing the walking time, the bus time and the train time (and possibly the waiting time as well) and see how that works out.

I'm pretty sure it takes me longer to commute home than it does to commute to work, but I think that is mostly due to waiting for a bus on the way home.

So tonight I will begin the first test of the Calgary Transit system and time how long it takes for me to get home. I will then time my commute tomorrow morning and will report on the results sometime tomorrow.