Imagine the scene.
You arrive at your local bus stop in the morning and wait for your bus to work. It’s a route you take routinely. Your bus journey takes 10 minutes. Buses come every 8 minutes. When it’s sunny you sometimes walk it and walking takes you half an hour.
Of course if you live in Sydney, you might commute on a boat like this one, but we'll stick with the bus imagery for now because it wouldn't make sense to try to swim spontaneously.
If you approach the bus stop with the rear lights of your bus trundling away from you, it is reasonable to assume that you can wait for the next bus and it will still be quicker than walking.
But you wait for 8 minutes and there is no bus.
And you wait 10 minutes and no bus.
And you wait 15 minutes and no bus as you glance anxiously at your watch.
And you wait 20 minutes and no bus as you tap your foot impatiently and tut.
And you wait 25 minutes and no bus and at this point you realise it would have been quicker to have walked.
You understand that you can still just get to work on time if you start walking now, but you worry that you will start walking and three buses will go sailing past you and the bus will be quicker than walking. And you know a bus IS coming because everything in your experience tells you that a bus will come eventually. But you still can't see one...
The commuter’s dilemma then: Do you wait or do you walk? And at what point do you walk?
On Saturday afternoon as I had my ice cream and looked at Circular Quay, I decided to walk.
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