Commuting unfortunately cuts into both. In his book Bowling Alone, the Harvard professor Robert Putnam documents a marked decline in American social capital, and notes that commute time is more predictive than almost any other variable he measured in determining civic engagement. He states that “each ten additional minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by ten percent—fewer public meetings attended, fewer committees chaired, fewer petitions signed, fewer church services attended, and so on.”37
