Ask Annie: husband's choice of public transit is taking hours away from our family every day

[lemonsharks]

Dear Annie: My husband is passionate about doing what we can as individual citizens to combat climate change. He believes the largest impact any one person can have is decreasing their driving. So, to do his part, he has started using the public transit system as much as possible.

Our city’s public transit is far from perfect and transforms what would be a 20-minute drive into a two-hour train/bus/bike trip. This has dramatically increased the amount of time he spends commuting.

I want to support his desire to be more eco-friendly, and I agree with his argument that using public transit more often will help increase ridership and, eventually, with luck, increase and improve service. But right now, it is taking a very long time. We have a small child, pets and a household to run. Every time he spends four hours to do something that could be completed in less than one, I feel so frustrated that he is choosing public transit and climate consciousness over his family, leaving me with more work to do.

How can I honor his desires and passions while also trying to strike a balance where I am not shouldering the extra work? -- Frustrated With Public Transit


Dear Frustrated: Props to your husband for his noble goal. When his humanitarian spirit starts affecting his personal relationships, however, it might be time for a compromise.

There are many ways to lead an eco-friendly life, and driving less is certainly one of them. Why not create a list of sustainable practices that do fit into your lifestyle? For example, you could start composting or stop using disposable plastic food containers.

On days where public transit is too much for you -- for example, when you have a pet and a baby in tow -- remind him that your household is doing its part in other ways. Then you can protect your time and still greenlight his green lifestyle.

Comments

[lemonsharks]

Sounds like husbando would rather have 4 hours on transit a day than 3 hours and 40 minutes tending to his home and family.

[jadelennox]

composting and using less plastic are tiny retail changes that fix nothing and create the illusion of individual change for a systemic problem. (Disclaimer: I do both. But I'm clear-eyed about their limitations.)

Taking public transit is also an individual retail choice, but it's one with a much larger footprint than the other two. So on that note, Annie's advice is garbage. Also she ignores the fact that LW isn't complaining about taking public transit herself; she's complaining about her husband taking time biking or taking the bus instead of driving so he can do more chores!

Better advice: "Your husband can make the moral choices that matter to him, but he can't make them for you. And you can't make them for him. You can divide the household responsibilities, and he can decide how to get his done. If he chooses to bike to the grocery store, maybe that means he has to stay up until 3AM folding laundry, or he has to use his play money to hire a kid to do the raking. You don't get to tell him he has to drive, but you do get to tell him that the pair of you agreed to split household responsibilities down the middle."

And don't take Annie's advice, or Husband might realize that actually effective environmentalism involves massive political activism and next thing you know he won't be around to bike the baby to day care because he'll have been arrested with Extinction Rebellion folks.

(Second disclaimer: I know most of us can't do real effective environmental activism. I also self-soothe with composting and farmer's markets and canvas tote bags. I am not shaming anyone who can't do those things, because that's literally the point: Annie is part of the system of trying to persuade us all that we can save the earth through capitalism and individualism. There's no evidence LW feels that way, to be fair; she's just exhausted that her biker husband isn't pitching in enough. I shame nobody in this situation except for Annie, and possibly Husband, depending on how he responds to a reasonable pitch from LW.)

[purlewe]

OK I get it. Husband wants to do his bit. Compromise might be (and only if the wife is interested) in meeting said husband part way. Say drop him off/pick him up at a terminal hub. It is a step closer to what he wants and doesn't take the full 2 hrs one way.

I agree tho that it sounds like he wants to have 4 hrs without family every day.

mass transit realllllly sucks most places. And even sucks in places it shouldn't suck (looking at you Baltimore with your terrible system to get to the DC area which is practically next door.) He either needs to find a compromise or he needs to drive half time to help out around home more.

[minoanmiss]

It's pretty telling that what husband chooses to give up to environmentalism is time that he could use for helping his busy wife with the small child and pets.

[laurajv]

I feel for the LW here. We used to live in a location where my bus to work took 30 minutes, but spouse's involved 2 or 3 busses (depending on which line arrived first) and took a minimum of 90 minutes. One of his coworkers, who owned a car, moved a few blocks from us and started giving him a lift to work in exchange for splitting the gas money -- it was a 10 minute drive.

If we'd had a small kid at the time and he'd chosen to bus when the ride was available, I would have been.........let's go with Extremely Not OK With That.

Husband is making trash choices that unfairly impact the LW. But Annie's answer is trash as well. A more serious discussion is called for (is this something husband can do 2x a week instead of every day? is it possible to move somewhere that makes mass transit or biking a more reasonable choice? etc)

[melannen]

Switching from car to transit commute helps even less if the transit commute is really long and inefficient. (In particular, it does nothing to help create a world where there are choices other than cars or long transit commutes. No, your husband doing it will not magically make the government realize it needs better transit options; it will at most convince them that what they have already works.)

LW if your husband is serious about this, he needs to be looking at changing either where he lives or where he works so he doesn't *have* to take several hours a day in commuting; changing to more condensed living patterns shaped by where transit actually *is* is an indispensible part of creating a world less dependent on individual cars.

Either way though, those choices are going to mean sacrifices - moving, switching to maybe a less-well-paying job, or spending hours a day on transit - and those are sacrifices that affect the whole family that he shouldn't be making on his own (and shouldn't be thinking he can make on his own!) You need to tell him that something that changes the pattern of your family life that dramatically needs to be a cooperative decision, and then talk over with him why it doesn't work for you.

If you are also serious about the importance of public transit, you should be working with him to think seriously about moving to a more transit-friendly neighborhood. And/or about taking that three hours a day of commute time and spending it on political activism instead of just sitting in a train car, which will have much more long-term usefulness.

[gingicat]

I actually gave up public transit because of family responsibilities and the fact that driving generally takes a third of the public transit time.

[resonant]

I once had a 90-minute commute for a year, and I'll tell you what: Even if the husband were single and childless and not responsible for so much as a houseplant, this wouldn't be sustainable. One year, two years, during which he had no time to meet neighbors, have a hobby, take a walk, go out to a restaurant at a normal time of day, see daylight in the winter, and he'd be looking for either a new home or a new job.

This doesn't address the wife's very reasonable desire to have a spouse and co-parent rather than an unseen source of money and laundry, of course. Just means he'll be divorced first and then looking for a new job or a new home.

[lilysea]

I wonder if the family could buy a second-hand electric car as a compromise?

The price of second hand electric cars is going down all the time...

[ethelmay]

Vanpool might be another option. I take it telecommuting isn't.