Is it an illusion that the journey home feels shorter?

In 2011, researchers in the Netherlands had people make the same trip there and back by bus and by bicycle, and also showed them a video of someone else cycling out and back. All three times, people felt the return trip was shorter, and in the bicycle study they rated it about 17% shorter.

The striking part is that the result held even when people came back by a different road of the same length that they had never taken. If familiar scenery were the cause, the effect should vanish on a new road. So the researchers concluded that familiarity alone cannot explain it.

People tend to guess that the outbound trip will take less time than it really does. Once they make the trip, it takes longer than expected, and that experience makes them brace for a long trip back.

Compared with that generous expectation, the return feels short, even when it takes exactly the same time. In the experiments, the more people felt the first trip ran longer than expected, the shorter the return seemed. When people were told in advance that the trip would take a while, the effect disappeared.

If the ride home on the last day of a vacation feels unusually short, the memory of how long the first day took may have stretched your inner yardstick.

The road feels shorter not because it shrank or because you walked faster. How long the same stretch of time feels depends on what you compare it with.

When heading somewhere new, try adding about 10 minutes to the map app estimate before you set out. The trip feels less draining, and you worry less about running late. Telling a child a realistic travel time instead of saying we are almost there may help for the same reason. If your morning commute feels longer than the trip home, it may be worth looking at the tight time you allow yourself each morning.