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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Having commuted by car, rail, walking, and working from home, I personally think a quick walk to work is by far the best option. You generally give that up in car centric cities and it’s a huge loss.

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3 minute walk to ferry pier 5 minute ferry ride across Sydney harbour to circular quay 6 minute walk to office Excellent 4g so able to hold video conference all the way That was my favourite commute.

Sydney depends a lot on where you are commuting from/to.

Trying to get to Circular Quay from western suburbs for instance is not all that nice.

20 minutes walk from office, never going back to 1~2 hour commutes.

5-20 minute commutes are more normal. If this sounds surprising to you, take a look at the Census Bureau's commute data. Keep in mind that this data includes commutes that cannot be walked that are in areas of low unemployment and high income relative to cost of living. https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/data/commute_times...

In the Midwest a 1-2 hour commute is normally 70 - 120 miles.

You (and the other commenter) need to be a lot more specific than "The Midwest", a large and diverse part of this country. That figure isn't close to true in Chicagoland at least, unless you're commuting suburbs to the boonies (and even then, you'd need to be lucky and have a tollway route). A 30 mile commute into the city, with traffic, takes like 50-70 minutes, a large reason why Metra commuter rail is so popular.

Chicago isn't a car centric city, probably the only in the Midwest.

That really depends on where you’re drawing the borders of Chicago. The Chicago metropolitan area is car centric, but looking at Chicago as a city unto it’s self and things look very different.

You give up the walk in bigger cities unless you pay top dollar for a downtown condo so you end up on transit (bus/subway), bike or even uber commuting

It’s a function of the relative amounts of housing and jobs in the inner city. People talk about building more houses as the solution to high prices, however escalating demand and long commutes are driven by increasing office space.

I used to ride my bike to work. I really miss that ever since the pandemic started.

Lived in Renens and had three or four options for getting to my office depending on the weather. Could walk the whole way, walk two different ways to the light rail, or if raining hop on the bus next to my apartment.

Good times.

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