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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Man I dream about being able to bike to work.

Maybe one day...

I used to do it most of the time during the summer, living 2 miles away from my workplace. (Now I work from home, so "going to work" means rolling out of bed and grabbing a laptop, modulo getting the kid ready for daycare.) I'd highly recommend it - aside from getting exercise & outdoor time, feeling refreshed each time you get into work, avoiding all the rush-hour traffic (in my area, getting over the Shoreline/101 bridge in a car could take as long as the entire bike ride in), and not needing to find parking, you also feel like you're doing something good for the environment, and my workplace had a program where they donated to charity every time you biked/walked/scootered/rollerbladed in.

Like many other "nice to have" things, it's a matter of making it a priority. I'd had an hour commute when I worked in downtown Boston, and when I moved out to Silicon Valley, I told the realtor that was showing me around "No more than 15 minutes away from work." He was like "15 minutes? That means Mountain View, Palo Alto, or some parts of Sunnyvale. It'll cost you a lot." I said "I'm prepared to pay."

Would be nice if cities were built in a way that not just a select few high-earners could walk or bike to work, though. Right now, every person that moves into bike commuting distance of the major employers tends to displace someone who needs to move further away (oftentimes much further away); only way to avoid that is with more density.

I work from home at least 2 days a week so there is that ;)

I totally agree with your description about the opportunity to be close to work. It's sort of sad that those who are often struggling with other things, career, money, are also the folks who can't afford to save time by being close to work.

Your inability to do so is the result of infrastructure, zoning, and parking minimum rules your (and your predecessors') politicians put in place, unfortunately.

Incidentally I built a site mapping homes for sale and rent over transit and bike routes (not roads) for Ireland, would it be useful for Scotland as well?

What is preventing you now?

About 40+ miles ;)

There is a place not far from me that i've seriously considered applying to that is VERY close. If only for that reason ;)

I meant in a 5 whys type of way. Why must you live 40 miles from work?

>Why must you live 40 miles from work?

If you're in a major city it just isn't feasible to purchase a home within walking distance of your business. In the Seattle area, for example, house prices would be easily over a million for anything nearby

In a 5-why's sense it's almost always feasible for you to purchase a home within walking distance of your business, it's just not feasible for everyone to purchase a home within walking distance of their workplace. Home prices are over a million dollars for anything nearby? Get a job that can support a million-dollar home - $1M requires an annual income of about $200K to be affordable, which is easily doable at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Boeing in the Seattle area. Can't get a job at one of those? Get a job at one of their smaller competitors, become a top contributor, get known in the field, and make some friends who work there. Lack the relevant skillset for that? Learn it - there's a wide open Internet searchable by Google and a lot of textbooks on Amazon where you can teach yourself the sort of theoretical CS that these companies desire. That's only 3 whys. You could also probably have substituted "rent an apartment" instead of "buy a house" and the number of employers that pay you enough to afford it would go up significantly.

A lot of people don't want it that much, and that's fine - that's why not everybody does live within walking distance of their employer. But if you want something enough, there are paths you can take that open up the possibility, you just need to be prepared to sacrifice in other areas.

This is a major oversimplification that is not at all feasible for most people. Sure, I could theoretically get an engineering position at Amazon, buy one of the highly desirable multimillion dollar properties within walking distance that sell before they're even on the market, sell my current house, move my family and possessions, and so on. How reasonable do you think that recommendation really is for most people? Also, this is talking about people running their own businesses, and I certainly don't run Amazon or have the funding to both open my own business anywhere near Seattle as well as purchase a house within walking distance. Sure, you can skew the entire scenario and say it's reasonable to work for a major company as an engineer rather than own your own company, rent an apartment rather than buy a house, and make any number of other changes but that isn't really what is being discussed

If you run your own business you often have a much easier pathway to living close to work: move your business. Commercial real estate rents often fall off even faster than residential ones do as you move away from the city center, and the competition from other local businesses tends to thin out. If it's a desirable and affordable place for you to live, it's likely a desirable and affordable place for your customers to live, which makes it an ideal place to situate a local business.

And being flexible with your lifestyle and assumptions so that you can get what you really want in life is exactly what is being discussed here.

Also, talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. Over-extending like that is a good way to become a slave to jobs you actually hate just to afford a lifestyle you forced upon yourself.

Obviously some people thrive in that situation. But sounds naive to not realize how few people can or want to take that gamble.

I bought my house 10+ years ago, and changed jobs and careers since then.

Moving is costly, in dollars, and in changes for my family.

And then my wife would work 40+ miles from work...

Commute distance, legality (biking from city to city on the interstate is a big no-no), inability to shower after a ride, weather (I'm looking at YOU, Scotland!), medical conditions, take your pick.

"interstate ... Scotland"

Where are you based?!

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