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Per U.S. Census data, relatively few people have a commute in the 5 minute block from 25 to 30 minutes. Only 20-25, and 30-35. The data shows a very clear valley in the 25-30 block.

Suggests people think of their commute as 20 plus a few minutes but rounding down optimistically, or think of it as almost 30 minutes rounding up angrily, never think of it as 27 minutes.

No writeup of the commute data has mentioned this phenomenon, which I suspect was exactly the same thinking you describe.




Do you have a link to this data?


Certainly. See page 3, top right, “Table 1: Travel Time to Work 2019”

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

    15 to 19 minutes . . . 14.9%
    20 to 24 minutes . . . 14.1%
    25 to 29 minutes . . .  6.6%
    30 to 34 minutes . . . 13.9%
And you can tell that after saying 30 mins, people next tended to say 45 mins.

// Noticed this while researching for a comment on HN a few weeks back.




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