I think it depends what you’re used to. I’ve never had a commute of more than 30 mins door to door and up until about 4 years ago that was always a walk so I had to adapt to taking public transport. It sucked at first but you adapt.
Another point is that you need to be honest with yourself about the actual commute time. I knew a guy who moved to somewhere near Stamford and used to bang on about how it would only be an hour 15 commute but in reality with additional travel time at each end and delays etc it was a lot more.
You also end up becoming one of those people who is always running for the train and can’t do anything without lots of planning. Back home we call those people ‘train bitches’
Part of the reason the commute is so harmful is that it is a type of stress we do not get used to, given the random and intermittent nature of issues. Perhaps if you live in Tokyo with trains that are always on time, then commuting is not that harmful. But the further away you get from 100% predictable the worse it gets
In mass transit like NY or Tokyo, you are squished with a lot of other noisy people and the herd pushes you everywhere. It is very stressful! Tokyo is far more crowded, but NY is much dirtier, so I don’t know which one is worse. Nowhere else than here do you see so many millionaires riding a pee smelling train.
I went from 90 min each way on a train, to 30 min in my car, to 3 min in my car. the long commute definitely took years off my life. i thought the 30 min was great until i got to 3 min. it’s hard to isolate the cost of commute time on its own, but i personally think time and reduced stress are much more valuable than the wage opportunity cost. But then again I turned into a hippie and couldn’t care less about economic status after my Great Awakening.
i’m about 40 minutes garage to office. 8 minutes to the park and ride, 30 minutes on a bus, 2 minutes walk into the office. The hour on the bus each day is usually where I either read or watch netflix on my phone. If i worked 30 seconds from my house I’d still spend an hour reading, so the commute doesn’t bother me too much. When I drive to the office it’s usually about 45 minutes, it’s $10-$12 to park(or about $200/month if i wanted to contract it) and you get 0 time to decompress before jumping into the dumpster fire.
My commute is typically about 5 seconds, but that can easily double or triple if there’s a cat on the stairs and I have to pick it up or pet it along the way.
the value of these things goes up at an increasing rate with age and growth of family so I can understand how the young bucks on here may not see it that way…for now.
Friends used to say, I want a short commute but I need to live some distance from the office, just for mental health. I think it’s all bs, go for the shortest commute possible. Lower taxes and commuting costs hopefully can offset some of the wage loss.