They have also done a study showing that the Pope is Catholic and one that provesabsolutely that bears do doo-doo in the woods..... LA equals stressful commute, nah, you don't say....

Some of this purported data looks pretty goofy to me, though, like average trip commute (am or pm, from what source or methodology?). The stress related issues and underlying data were collected how? The thesis probably has some not just a little truth to it, but the data they present looks just plain goofy.

Average am peak commute in Sou Cal the last time I checked was around 26 minutes for all trips (it was around 20 minutes when we walked to work in 1890) the last time I saw the census data.... For every poor bastard having to drive 50 miles there are 4 people like my GF who drove 3 miles on residential streets to the school where she taught.

There are some very long and awful subsets like the survey I did in the 90's and early 2000's on routes like the 91 (which at an average one way am trip at Lakeview in OC westbound had an average 93 minute one way commute, the longest ever surveyed in the US, from a photo license plate postcard survey methodology of 120,000 observations and a return rate of nearly 23,000 valid return post cards (not exactly a small sample size). But, this is not the average commute of all commuters.

Yes, transit can be a much less stressful form of commute.

When I worked in downtown LA and took the Gold Line, it would take the same 25 minute (plus up to ten at times) by car, from Pasadena, maybe even five minutes longer because of the Red Line transfer. But, I saved 12 dollars a day on parking, which was still a two block walk from the building, another 20 dollars a day in fully allocated vehicle mileage cost, and I got to still listen to the radio on my headset, and do the Times Friday crossword before arriving at LAUPT.

So yeah, transit can be a hell of a lot less stressful, than crawling along in stop and go traffic, that is "if" you are lucky enough to have good quality transit that goes where you need to go, with fast, frequent, and reliable service.

Many folks just don't have that kind of high quality transit alternative to most destinations. And, those folks are going to continue to drive to work, and aren't going away any time soon, and our roads are increasingly beyond there optimal flow rates, break down,and actually lose physical dynamic flow capacity, when breakdown creates stop and go, making congestion delay go up exponentially, so get used to the stress......

As the old billboard used to say: "NEXT TIME, TAKE THE TRAIN..."