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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

I must admit this is something I do not understand the appeal of. I have a 15 minute walk as my commute, and one of the things holding me in place right now is the inability to contemplate sacrificing this luxury. I used to do a ~40 minute commute, and I hated it - 1.5 hours of my day I considered wasted.

I appreciate many of these extreme commuters can get some stuff done during their commute, but what's the point of having a nice place to live if it's quite so far away? I find it hard to see any benefit in these lifestyles over staying central Monday to Friday and commuting home for the weekends. You're not getting anything back by going home every night.

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I don't think there is any appeal to it. More like 1. The well paying jobs are in places like Central London and NYC but 2. Housing in those places is unaffordable so you live in a more affordable place far away.

My current commute is 30 mins each way. It's right at my maximum, but I don't really mind it since I only go to the office a couple of times a week. Usually what I do on those days is plan to get other things done either on the way to work (there is a gym location 1/2 way) or on the way home (like grocery shop).

The commute is also on two highways that run pretty well unless there is a wreck. I would rather a slightly longer commute with easy driving than a shorter one with horrible traffic.

How does 2x40min add up to three hours?

40min with good traffic?

Maybe he/she's having lunch at home

Public transport?

I used to go to college less than 30 minutes drive away, but I did not have a license or money to drive (Europe) and public transport took 3h in real terms to do that journey.

Sometimes it is not economical to have a car (lack of parking, excessive costs etc;)

Do people really measure their commute time using a method of transportation they don't use?

Americans I've met have certainly done this.

Americans tend to measure distance in "time" which doesn't work when you're dealing with alternative transport methods.

For instance someone told me the Philadelphia is "just 3 hours away, so it can't be that far" when I asked him how long it took by train. (it took 5hours in the end)

Americans frequently cite long distances by time: the assumption is that you are taking a car and that the traffic is whatever they perceive as normal.

For very long distances, this correlates to 50-60 miles per hour.

For trips inside an urban area, it's rarely accurate to the nearest 10 minutes.

Wow, some pretty extreme disconnect. 30min of driving vs 3h of public transportation? What was the route? In European cities, I'm used to at most 2x the difference, and sometimes it's actually faster with the public transport, if you work in a city centre and go there with a tram (which mostly avoids traffic).

Also, even if public transport takes ~2x the time of a drive, I still prefer it. That 1h / day in a car as a driver is completely wasted, while the 2h / day in a bus is something I can (and do) use to read books/articles, answer e-mails, etc. I try to schedule my day so that anything I can do on a bus I'll do on a bus.

If you're seriously curious it was a bus route between Coventry and Sutton Coldfield in the UK.

By car it can take as little as 20 minutes, especially due to a toll motorway which never has traffic.

By bus you must take a 1.5hour bus into Birmingham city center (the bus number 900, goes via the airport), go across the city center on foot (20 minutes) usually wait 10-20 minutes for a 40 minute bus ride (940) into Sutton Coldfield.

It doesn't, I double doubled, instead of just doubled it. Thanks for pointing it out!

Likewise, my commute from my home to the office, is approximately five minutes. I'm in Upstate New York. I see these salaries/lifestyles out West/Down State, and wonder if I ever made a mistake sticking around here. But for the amount of my life I've saved having zero commute times, I feel like it's justified. The ability to run home for lunch, take a nap, come back to the office, is just magical.

Wait til you need to find a school for your kids. It changes everything.

This is one of the (few) great things about charter schools. They admit irrespective of location. As long as you are in the county, can find transport there, and they have space you are in.

This is working out so well that even the public schools are doing it. I won't be sending our son to our local middle school. He'll commute with me and go to the school a few blocks from my office.

I went to a below average school and turned out just fine so I'm not worried about my hypothetical children going to an average school.

All that money you're spending on a three hour commute could probably hire a private tutor.

you're getting to see your family, if you have one!

Although I agree that if I was in such a situation I would do whatever I can to find another solution ASAP.

Are you though? If you factor in 4 hours of commuting minimum on top of an 8 hour work day (generously low), plus 8 hours sleep, you end up with 4 hours of quality time as an absolute maximum. If you have young children, this time is unlikely to coincide with waking hours anyway!

I don't think there is an appeal. I would move 15 minutes to work _in a heartbeat_ if I could afford it. Starter homes near my job go for $1.2M+. The difference in housing costs between where I live and 15 minutes to work are about 10X the total cost of a car + all maintenance and gas. So I commute.

exactly. My house was 180k + 2hr commute. I could get a house for around 1M + 8min commute. We are talking about $4k/mo difference.

If I commuted 5 days a week, you could look at that as $100/hr made by choosing to commute. I only commute 3 days a week, so it is more like $160/hr. And I get to work on the train for half my commute. It's not bad.

> And I get to work on the train for half my commute.

That's the thing that's key for me. I go nuts if I'm sitting behind the wheel in traffic for more than 20 minutes. I can easily do, for example, an hour each way on the commuter rail or shuttle. In fact, I feel it actually allows me to waste less time because I'll bookend emails and other communications in my day to my commute, and then while I'm at work I am able to focus better.

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