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I have this theory that one of the contributing factors to the "I don't want to go to the office" trend in the US (which I'm part of), is that cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe, where public transport is really practical, and cities are built for density, your commute is often much less cumbersome AND you can enjoy some social life after work since you're in the city. Here (the bay) it was just the worst. Companies can't build in cities so they build large offices in suburbs. There's a lack of housing so no matter where you live you'll end up paying like crazy. And there's pretty much no practical public transport so you're just going to live through hell. I spent some time in LA and I can't even imagine how people deal with that there. I'm never going to commute ever again after that experience, unless I'm back to Europe.

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I've never lived in the US, so I can't comment on the commute situation there, but I live and work in Paris proper and one of the main reasons "I don't want to go to the office" is the commute.

I need 30-45 minutes to get there, and our public transit system is supposedly good. But the metro's still too crowded, dirty, smelly, etc. And I even usually avoid rush hour and take an automated, hassle-free line.

Commuting by personal motorized vehicle is hell, so you can forget that.

I'm contemplating buying an electric bike, but only because I'm lucky I have a place to keep it secure both at the office and at home.

The situation may be better in smaller cities, but I think that this consideration still affects a quite sizable bunch of people (20% of the country's population lives in the Paris region).

Seconding. I live in Kraków, Poland, which has a great public transit infrastructure. For all jobs I had, I could always get into the office in 20 to 40 minutes. That's still 20 to 40 minutes too much - it's 40 to 80 minutes per day, out of my very limited free time. I hated it, and I prefer WFH.

A threshold for me is probably around 5 minutes, counting from my apartment's door to the office door. Anything more feels like wasting time, so I'll avoid it for as long as I have the option.

Calling Kraków's transit great is a long stretch.

I live in Stockholm and have a beautiful 20 minute walk to the office. It takes about the same by bus or metro.

On the other hand I have an 45m2 apartment, since I would rather have a small place in the center of Stockholm than having a bigger one in the suburbs.

Have you considered moving to another city if so where? I’ve always wanted to work in Stockholm

Do you want to take his apartment?

Lmao

Well, I'm spending the fall in Barcelona right now, but I don't think I'll move somewhere else permanently. As I get older I seem to get more attached to Sweden and have hard time imagining building a permanent life somewhere else.

I'm actually wondering what you consider not a long commute if 30 minutes hits the threshold. I've known plenty of people who have longer commutes driving directly from home to work.

It's not only a question of time, but also of how that time is spent.

For example, I would much rather prefer to walk 30-40 minutes instead of taking a crowded, smelly metro for 20. I actually used to regularly walk 50 minutes to get home in the evening because I didn't want to deal with the transit.

There's also the fact that this is the time it takes when everything works well. Again, I take an automated line, which is fairly reliable.

But most of the other lines have "incidents" going quite often (more than once a week). In this case, if the delay isn't extreme (less than 30 minutes) people will just wait and stuff themselves in the even-more-crowded trains when they do show up. Or they'll try taking another line, adding to that train's usual crowd.

When there are too many people, trains usually have delays, because they have to deal with people literally not fitting in the train at the stops.

So even if you're OK with riding a train packed to the brim (say you ride from end to end, so you're guaranteed to have a seat and won't have to fight your way off the train), you still can't count on getting at your destination on time.

That's interesting, I'd generally much rather drive an hour than walk 20-30 minutes. I lived on a college campus for a while where you could walk to everything and I like it much more now driving everywhere.

I was vaguely irritated when I moved office because it was 10 minutes walk from home; the previous one was about 35 minutes. So it cut down on my mandatory walking; I had to start going for a walk in the evenings to compensate :)

That's crazy o_O a 20-30 minute walk is like the best commute. I think you're doing your health a disfavor.

Where I live now isn't very walkable anyway, but I am planning to get a treadmill and electric bicycle.

> I'd generally much rather drive an hour than walk 20-30 minutes

Why?!

The car is climate controlled, has a stereo, I can have water/food in it without needing a backpack or carrying anything, and it's sitting in a comfortable seat while I'd find a super long walk like that uncomfortable. I could use headphones while walking but something about walking feels like a constant distraction if I'm trying to listen to something. And if I'm in a car, I feel like I can go anywhere I want on a whim, while if I'm walking I'll just want to get it over with and only stop somewhere if it's directly on the way.

If you find walking 20 mins uncomfortable and don’t think you have any health conditions I’d recommend seeing a doctor.

I don't mind walking if I want to, on a trail or something, but not if I have to. I guess I'm just not used to it and don't like it enough to make it a habit.

It depends what you're walking through! I'll walk for hours on a beautiful nature trail or a pretty, safe cityscape with interesting sidewalk-addressing buildings.

I won't walk for 5 minutes sandwiched between a fast road strip-mall parking lots, industrial facilities, or open fields.

Lol what’s wrong with walking next to an open field?

It's exposed (to the sun and the wind) and it's dull. Inviting pedestrian environments need a sense of enclosure. Can be sidewalk-abutting buildings, can be trees, can be parked cars, can be all three. And they need stuff to look at that isn't monotonous.

Fair enough, but you couldn't do 5 minutes of walking by an open field?

That kind of thing usually occurs in low-intensity suburbs/exurbs where I can just drive.

For a five minute walk? With having to start and park the car, you might not even make it faster.

Walking the small path between a highway and some fields was literally how I got to high school.

Because he's American. By and large, they love cars.

For me, anything over 10-15 minutes is "long". It has always struck me as a weird concept that 45 minutes-each-way is a "normal" amount to travel to work, or even that people are happy its under an hour.

Edited to say I suppose I am privileged enough to have the option, and that I have traveled more than an hour before (I just wasn't happy about it)

I consider a five-minute commute to be short. Ten can be okay too, if the route is nice (e.g. you live in a pretty place and you travel through it to get to work). That is door-to-door.

Five minutes doesn't even feel quite like I've left home.

It's fair to say that I prefer it that way :)

30 minutes is still 5 hours a week

Times 50 weeks is 250 hours or literally 250/8= 31 active days wasted per year! A month of your life!

It's fine if you walk you can think about anything, but if you drive a car you waste your time.

I can think about anything when I drive a car. Walking exercises your muscles, so it's preferable way of transportation because of health, but not because of thinking, IMO.

> I can think about anything when I drive a car.

The rest of the world would prefer you to think about driving a car when you drive a car.

When you're walking, OTOH, thinking about anything is OK. (The only person you'll kill by doing that unthinkingly is you.)

God, Americans are weird.

Thinking consciously and explicitly about a skill like driving (or hitting a tennis ball) is a good way to screw it up. Obviously you have to be aware of your surroundings. But if you're thinking about when or how to press the pedals or how far to turn the steering wheel, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah, OK, I could have used some phrase like "directing your main attention to" in stead of "thinking".

I used them as synonyms because I assumed the GP meant "thinking" as in thinking with concentration about some specific issue(s), which tends to divert your attention from your surroundings far more than the idle stream-of-consciousness / daydreams we all have going in the back of our heads all the time. Didn't you?

Should probably have said "When you're driving, the rest of the world would prefer you to concentrate on your driving and your surroundings, traffic, pedestrians etc. Deep actual thinking is far better done while walking than while driving."

But that wouldn't have made for a snappy turn-his-own-words-against-him comeback. :-)

Anything more than 10min on a daily basis feels arduous to me.

Once you get used to a life where you do not have to drive more than 5min to get everywhere, it would really suck to have go further. Even better than a 5 to 10min drive is being walking distance.

For me the ideal commute(pre Covid) was an under 20 mins walk/bike ride. That is still nearly 3.5 hours a week not counting dressing up / getting ready for the commute.

Now that I have experienced 2 min commute nothing will be better

Pre-Covid I was travelling 1.5hours each way, door to door. Awful..

Same.. mainly due to extremely unaffordable housing situation as a student. But because of covid my university my university now livestreams and records every lecture and has online meetings for exercise groups. It's actually incredible and in a way this is one good thing that came out of covid.

I cannot even imagine not being able to rewatch part of a lecture as a student. That seems incredibly bad.

I’d take a crowded train any day over driving, though I get why some people loathe it.

I miss taking the train when I was in Europe compared to driving in the US. I had the option to read a book some days or play a game. Definitely more options to find joy when compared to driving when I can only choose from podcasts, music and audiobooks

The main difference for me is the mode of transport provides different possibilities for joy or benefit. While the cons of biking or walking maybe be sweating and climate, there’s a lot of joy and health benefits to be had if the times are comparable (e.g., 20 minute walk, 20 minute bike ride)

Take advantage of the 500eur subsidy for ebikes if you can. And... Well it's Paris, so be prepared to shout and push your way to work... I went recently in a crowded miced car+bicycle place in Paris, and it was pure pandemonium, I don't know how no one got terribly hurt in the half hour I was there.

> Commuting by personal motorized vehicle is hell, so you can forget that.

This is the standard way of commuting in most of the US.

Hell is well-populated.

Lmao, underrated comment

I’d take your commute, in exchange I’ll give you my daily 3 hours in a shaky shuttle round trip I used to do at fb

This is fairly similar to the US commute in terms of time and annoyance.

> Europe, where public transport is really practical, and cities are built for density

Hmm, European cities weren't built for commuting or public transport, almost all of them were laid out in the medieval era for walking. They then acquired one or more railway stations in the 19th century, creating commuter ring #1 and becoming an order of magnitude larger, and may have been partially redesigned for cars in the 20th century, creating commuter ring #2. A popular conversion was demolishing the medieval-era city walls and replacing them with a ring road. Some were entirely flattened during the war, although generally rebuilt on the same plan.

Now most American cities were by comparison entirely designed for commuting ... by car. The problem with car commuting is that once you're over capacity it slows down the experience for everyone. Public transport just jams you in physically, which was uncomfortable before the pandemic and now just a nightmare. An overcrowded train is not slower than an empty one. (Subway throughput can be embark/disembark limited, though)

The difference to me seems to be the walkable core. That in turn depends on norms about use of public space and perceptions of public safety.

I'm slightly biased, but I think the Edinburgh New Town design with a couple of modern adaptations could be the ideal even for the 21st century. Grid layout, four to six floors, high ceilings, decent size windows, wide streets, occasional shop on the corner or restaurant in the basement.

("New" here means 18th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh, not "new" as in postwar new town or medieval New Forest)

>An overcrowded train is not slower than an empty one.

I have taken the "California Train" which runs from San Francisco to San Jose, and advertises its capacity to carry bicyclists. Numerous times, however, bicyclists were denied boarding (each had paid for his ticket) because the carriages had become overcrowded, with the subsequent train arriving in forty-five minutes' time.

This experience made me understand why many commuters in that region embrace the automobile in spite of its many drawbacks.

That's a very infrequent service; commuter rail in most places would generally be higher frequency.

The whole medieval cities designed for walking is not actually true. Not just bikes youtube channel(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ) has a great video about this. Here he has taken Houston as an example.

> I'm slightly biased, but I think the Edinburgh New Town design with a couple of modern adaptations could be the ideal even for the 21st century. Grid layout, four to six floors, high ceilings, decent size windows, wide streets, occasional shop on the corner or restaurant in the basement.

Likewise Berlin, though a bit taller: https://goo.gl/maps/HyMJsSFKQNErfWJZA

(New Town reminds me a lot of some parts of Cambridge; I think it’s the stone colour and some of the motifs).

I just moved to the New Town from Chicago and the difference in walkability and general "convenient access to convenient things in the city" is startling. I highly recommend it!

> cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe...

I moved from the Middle East to the US. Cairo was a shit city for commuting. But that didn't stop socializing, because the other big difference between the US and many other countries is how individualistic and work-based society is. Back home, I had relatives, child-hood friends, etc that I was not only able to see, but often EXPECTED to see (even when I didn't want to).

In other countries, life was much more social, and work was just a tiny part of your social life. In the US, everything is individualistic (and nuclear family oriented) and people rely on the office for socialization.

Europe only has good public transport in very few selected cities and you have to ignore strikes in France to pretend its working well and is reliable. The city with the best public transport in the world is probably Tokyo in terms of frequency and service reliability but it is constantly over capacity and things are not getting better. Crowded trains are hell.

so no commute is certainly better pretty much just anywhere.

> you have to ignore strikes in France to pretend its working well and is reliable

This is the same argument has "what about the rain ?" for people who don't want to commute by bicycle.

Yes, it happens. But it's only a few days a year. Contrary to traffic. So you can adapt. Human is supposed to be great at adaptation. And the rest of the year it just works.

> But it's only a few days a year.

As for rain, the average where I am is about 120 days a year. While some of those days are "not much rain", it's still enough that walking/biking to/from work would be fairly annoying a large number of days per year. Plus... winter and snow (which is included in the number above, but more of an issue).

I doubt it rains all day for 120 days a year.

It only matters if it rains in the few minutes you spend cycling. Yesterday it rained here, but I assume it was before dawn.

I believe the "a few days a year" comment referred to strikes, not rain.

To imply that in some parts of the world (desert climate, reliable public transit service), the disruption is infrequent and manageable, and in others (wet and cold climates, unreliable public transit service) the disruption is significant enough to render the bicycle or the public transit economically non-viable for some users.

> But it's only a few days a year.

A few days a year? Thanks for the euphemism, it made for a good laugh.

>Europe only has good public transport in very few selected cities and you have to ignore strikes in France to pretend its working well and is reliable.

Well, until recently I've lived in a very much French city for twelve years and I've never had to face a strike or any problem besides bus traffic being shifted around due to road work. To the point I've now got to get a driving licence in my thirties, as I've never needed it before. Maybe that was just luck.

I'm French and maybe experienced a strike once or twice in my life. That being said, people who commute daily using public transportations maybe affected a few days a year. Usually, strikes are mostly planned in advance. Technical incidents are more an annoyance.

> Europe only has good public transport in very few selected cities and you have to ignore strikes in France to pretend its working well and is reliable.

It's working well and reliable enough.

> The city with the best public transport in the world is probably Tokyo in terms of frequency and service reliability but it is constantly over capacity and things are not getting better.

Things absolutely are getting better; crowding is better than it was. A healthy growing city will always have some capacity issues at any given time, but that's the same as anything.

> so no commute is certainly better pretty much just anywhere.

Not at all proven. Most people choose not to live right next to their workplace even when that's an option. 15-30 minutes' separation is helpful IMO. Even if I'm not commuting, it takes me that long to get my head out of "work mode", and having my home be my workplace makes that worse. "You don't take your work home with you" was always something I looked for in job applications.

Not everyone wants to move every time they get a new job, or every time their spouse gets a new job

I live somewhere in central Tokyo, and as long as I’m fine with a max 1hr commute I can reach pretty much anywhere else in central Tokyo (which is where the jobs are).

Not everyone can afford to live in central Tokyo. 2 hours commutes are not uncommon.

What point are you making?

If your job is on the red line, and your house is on the red line, it's an easy commute, maybe 20 minutes. Calm, relaxing, easy to zone out.

If you change jobs, the new office might be on the purple line. Which does not cross the red line. So now you need to take the red line, to the green line (15 minutes + 10 minute layover = 25 minutes), and then change trains again to get to the purple line (15 minutes). That's assuming there are no delays, weather, construction/remodeling at any of the stations. If your morning coffee takes too long you might miss your connection, and now you've blown out your schedule by another 15-20 minutes, especially if part of your commute takes one of the less-frequent suburban lines.

End result is your 20 minute commute to your old office, has turned into a 40+ minute commute one way, assuming no delays. On a good day. Plus walking to and from the station.

My old office used to be on Castro Street in Mountain View, a 5 minute walk from the Caltrain Station. Then they leased a large building in the warehouse district, a 20 minute walk away. My old train commute + walk was almost exactly 1 hour from San Francisco; with the new office relocation it turned into 1 hour 15 minutes each way, which meant when I got home in the evening, the tram I wanted to take home had already stopped running, meaning either walk 45 minutes, or take a $9 (probably $15 in today's economy) uber home.

What point was he making? Well, switch jobs, and just move closer to your new office! Easy! Just never buy a house and only switch jobs at the end of your lease term, and rent forever.

>Easy! Just never buy a house and only switch jobs at the end of your lease term, and rent forever.

Sounds precariously close to "you'll own nothing and be happy" or something along those lines.

Agree that you want to be living somewhere with enough employers within tolerable commute range, and obviously it's hard to compete with access to the whole world. I don't find a single change to be beyond the pale (maybe I would if it was a 10 minute wait), and I find that in dense cities with decent networks you can be in range of "enough" employers, but YMMV.

> It's working well and reliable enough.

Clean, blanket statement, what a good argument to make! based on what metrics exactly?

> It's working well and reliable enough.

For whom?

Around this German state, a 30 minute drive turns into 2 hours commute into each direction if I go with public transport.

And this is one of the places with best connections.

Back home in Portugal, and many other southern countries, good luck with the bus connections that only come around once per hour, and better not skip the 2nd connecting bus/train.

Well, there are always exceptions, you can always find a place that's 10min by bus and the place that's 2h by bus but 30min by bike

It depends. Though German public transport is one of the best in Europe.

It is one of the best if you are lucky enough to live close to one of the big city centers.

There are tons of places where car is the only option, or after 8pm there are no running public transports (you are supposed to stay home, I guess).

Many Tier 2/3 cities in Europe do it best in terms of access to great public transportation and an easy going lifestyle.

Pitiful wages though. Like you'd be lucky to get $60k in those places.

yet you get universal healthcare, pension, and a bunch of other stuff which makes life affordable.

Not really, house prices are insane and income taxes and sales taxes are much higher too.

I wish I had American citizenship tbh.

I don’t know why this is downvoted. This is very much true. Outside of a handful of largest cities, Europeans are as car-dependent as Americans, and if they drive less, it’s mostly because they are poorer, while cars and gas are more expensive: instead of replacing what in the US would be car trips with public transit, they simply travel less and stay home more. As European nations get wealthier, car ownership rises, and people drive more kilometers. If you use public transit outside of a handful of major cities, you’ll find that it’s full of students and retirees, instead of commuters.

Seems to me that many people here simply project their tourist experience while vacationing in London of Paris, as a result getting a wrong image of how people in Europe actually live their lives.

> Outside of a handful of largest cities, Europeans are as car-dependent as Americans, and if they drive less, it’s mostly because they are poorer, while cars and gas are more expensive: instead of replacing what in the US would be car trips with public transit, they simply travel less and stay home more.

Citation? I think we travel less far, but that's not because people choose to stay home so much as because you don't have to travel so far to achieve the same things (e.g. we probably travel less far to visit relatives than Americans, but still visit our relatives more often and spend more time with them).

I’d like to point out that the correlation between size and public transport isn’t always applicable. Helsinki has a fantastic and uncrowned public transport system. It’s also affordable (50-60e) a month. And it’s a tiny city when you compare to other capitals.

And yet despite that, Uusimaa still has 0.4 cars per capita, so that great majority of households own a car anyway.

Uusimaa is a huge area, covering far more than Helsinki. I'm talking specifically about the metropolitan area.

I know nothing about commuting in Finland but is Uusimaa not roughly equivalent to "the economic gravity well of Helsinki"?

Sounds like you two are nit picking over the difference between the I495 loop being the "DC area" vs everything east of Fredricksburg/Front Royal/Fredreick being the "DC area".

I've no idea of the Geography you are referring to in the DC area, being European. That said Uusimaa is a region, Helsinki is a (capital city). Helsinki spans quite a large geographic area and is fairly densely populated but primarily in a metropolitan area. Take a look on google maps and you'll see it's tiny, say compared to London, Paris, Berlin etc. Uusimaa covers a much bigger area with huge amounts of space between the edge and the metropolitan area (mostly covered with fields, private land and forest).

Most of the population of Uusimaa (pop. 1.7M) lives in Greater Helsinki metropolitan area (pop 1.5M).

> As European nations get wealthier, car ownership rises, and people drive more kilometers

I'm not sure this is true. Ireland went from one of the poorest nations in Western Europe to one of the richest from 1990 to now. In Dublin, commuting to work via car has been falling since at least the late 90s, driven by increased traffic, and greatly improved public transport and cycling infrastructure (though still quite bad by European standards); it hit 30% by 2018. The number of cars per capita is still, as far as I know, rising, but they're being used to commute to work less.

Rural areas of the country are much more of a mixed bag, and prosperity did drive an increase in driving there (though it has started to fall off a bit during the recovery after the financial crisis). But in urban areas, prosperity does _not_ seem to drive increased car use.

> In Dublin, commuting to work via car has been falling since at least the late 90s, driven by increased traffic

Ah, the classic joke, "nobody drives in Manhattan; there is too much traffic there".

> The number of cars per capita is still, as far as I know, rising, but they're being used to commute to work less.

Alas, 75% of Irish workers commute by passenger car, either as driver or as passenger. Only 10% of workers commute using public transit. That's what I meant when I said that Europeans are very much car dependent too: even in Dublin, the capital, most of the workers drive, and small minority uses public transit. Outside Dublin, cars dominate even more.

We can take Hamburg for example #1. Beautiful city, working public transportation, BUT there are congestions, and try getting anywhere from other end of the town early morning (rush hour) or late at night. Sometimes almost impossible.

#2 I live in Zagreb, Croatia - recently drove from Austria back through Slovenia to Zagreb, ended up spending more time in Zagreb traffic at 11:30 am then driving across three countries.

Hm. I agree to #1 mostly, but it could be better. More light rail like Hochbahn & S-Bahn would be good.

OTOH they extended the Metrobus and Expressbus like mad, at least it felt so after my initial disappointment from around 2004.

Most bus stops have an electronic timetable, dynamically updating their 4 rows. The busses are prioritized on traffic lights and partially have their own reserved lanes.

For when- and whereever I need to go I simply don't care when exactly, because a few minutes later the next one is coming, which applies the same way for sometimes necessary switches.

30mins max from outlying suburb to core, rather 20mins, maybe 50 to 60min from my edge to another edge of town, not necessarily through the core.

Only at night the intervals are getting longer, and the net is less 'dense', but not catastrophically so.

And it is fu****g expensive for single tickets :-(

When was the last time you used the HVV?

Besides that usually I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle... ;)

edit: Try this? [·] https://geofox.hvv.de/jsf/home.seam?clear=true&language=en

May 2020.

Yup, inner centre is pretty great for a bike.

He, actually I prefer the outer suburbs for bicycling because downtown is insane. In the suburbs I can tone the paranoia that everyone is out there to kill me at least down a little :)

Well, the suburbs too for sure. I probably meant outer centre, for the thrill of the ride as you mention :).

> Hamburg for example

Even in another much smaller German city of only ~50k inhabitants, my school commute for years was ~40-50 minutes (dependent on season etc.; EDIT: 40-50 minutes per direction, also on mondays and another weekday my schooldays started at 07:05 not at 08:00) when the trip by bicycle to the same school would only take me ~20-25 minutes. Add to that the rapid aging of the population combined with the old people having the absolutely stellar idea to go by bus during the 07:15 morning school rush. Not like they have the whole day free to schedule their appointments... oh, wait And after years of having to deal with these fossils (most with that creepy perpetual half-smile-half-smirk) who think they're entitled to demand that people of all pre-pension ages (sometimes even heavily pregnant women) vacate their seats for them instead of literally just walking one or two steps further to the next seat, thereby not only clogging up the bus corridor while everyone has to shuffle around but also being a general nuisance I've got enough and for years haved avoided riding busses in this city like the plague.

I've seen public transport done differently and better in other cities, one key feature for working better AFAICT being tram lines with low intervals, not like in the above example relatively short busses every ~15-20 minutes per line.

Why you got downvoted is the same reason EU doesn't have startups.

Lived in France in lyon and bordeaux and public transport was top notch. Travelled all over the place and never had an issue. Now in north america…

> but it is constantly over capacity and things are not getting better

Well, you get used to it. I like reliably crowded trains much better than occasionally crowded trains.

Last week my car wouldn't start when I was heading home. I called AAA and waited. And waited. After 2 hours I went to the street and it's 5 miles of housing developments one way and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 fast food restaurants the other. I got a $30 Lyft after 4 hours of sitting in the dark at my office. AAA called at 3AM asking if I still needed service...

Why would I want to go to the office???

This hits home. I've been working remotely ever since we moved away from LA, largely because the traffic situation there was just unbearable. I don't even know how people with kids do it, since it takes hours to drive a few miles on each side of the work day, how do you drop off/pick up kids from daycare? I realize it's incredibly privileged position to be in but I actually don't know how we'd fit office-based work into our lives again with two kids under 5 -- I guess you have to pay for a nanny and accept that you get to see your kids on the weekends.

In LA or California really you can put your kids in schools by your office.

Boston is often compared to a European city. I also think I fit your observation pretty well, as I can't wait to be back in our downtown office. I'm looking forward to a 25 minute bike commute and being in a lively area packed with things to do. The routine gives me a little bit of everything (exercise, people, fresh air, and amenities) and it's conveniently built right into the work day.

I see the 'European' connection moreso than some other cities here in the US. I've visited Boston twice - once just a few weeks ago - and I could definitely see some attraction of living/working there. It seemed way too expensive to actually live in for my budget, but I may have just gotten too accustomed to a LCOL area. I enjoyed the breadth and depth of the city, and have some family living there at the moment, so I expect I'll get to enjoy a bit more of it next year.

Yeah, it’s an infrastructure problem. I love my commute because it allows me to disconnect from work after I’m done with it. I don’t think my American colleagues understand that, even though i get a lot of sympathy from my European colleagues.

I had to, though, be intentional about setting up my commute so i had time to read a book to and fro, and I’m sure not everyone is willing to think about it in those terms.

I foresee a movement in a few years of “commute forward” people trying to improve on their work-life balance, once they realize how much of life they’re going to be missing once they start commingling work and home life together.

> I foresee a movement in a few years of “commute forward” people trying to improve on their work-life balance, once they realize how much of life they’re going to be missing once they start commingling work and home life together.

Could we just agree that people are different and that some of us do not feel the way you do?

When I'm working I put on work clothes, I sit at my work desk and I take my work coffee cup. When I am done, I roll down my roll-top desk, and go pick up the kids on foot.

Arguably I appreciate that work culture in North-America and Asia may not be conducive of this. But ultimately we can all have the separation we need.

For me I built it around routines and work/leisure separation. For you it is your commute. Could we not let us both have what we want?

I hate the commute, I love the cache clearing it provided. It can be easily replaced by a hike in the afternoon or a book session in the garden.

I have this theory that one of the contributing factors to the "I don't want to go to the office" trend in the US (which I'm part of), is that cities are also not made for commuting

I live (well lived) within easy biking distance of the office (and commuted by bike nearly every day) and after the first few months of COVID work from home, I didn't ever want to go back to the office. We have an open floor plan office that's loud and not conducive to concentrating on work, and we have a distributed workforce (3 USA locations and 3 international locations), so most meetings had at least one zoom participant.

I took advantage of working from home to move farther from the office (now I'm within biking distance of a transit station that will take me to work, but the commute takes over twice as long as it used to), and will do my best to go to the office as little as possible. (we don't have a return to office date yet, but we reportedly won't be expected to be back 5 days a week)

Same here. I actually love my commute since it allows me to do 30 minutes of free soft exercise a day.

But I hate being at the office. There's nothing I like about it. Noise, disturbances, poor desktop setup, too hot in summer, too hot in winter, no place to take an actual break...

Obviously it's a personal preference, but most people I know who have easy commutes (<20 min, walk, bike or public transit) still don't want to go into the office. Neither do I.

It might be nice for a change of pace of a specific purpose (i.e. planning meeting that is just easier in-person).

If I want to go downtown and socialize with coworkers, I can do that after work (and have while WFH).

As a counterpoint, I loved my commute to work in the Bay. After almost 16 years of not riding a bike, I took a chance on getting one and fell in love with riding around the city. For the first year I also rode BART pretty much every day. It had its downsides but honestly I just learned to have a more positive mindset about it.

Obviously this isn't viable solution to many people, and cycling has lots of risks, but its just an anecdote I had.

ALSO, the days I had to drive my car in the city were some of the most stressful ever(big car too).

Bart is beyond a minor downside, it’s absolutely atrocious public transportation.

This mindset is mind-boggling to me. BART’s operational reliability is excellent. The new cars are really nice. Trains in the core come often. What exactly makes it “absolutely atrocious public transportation”? Of course it doesn’t serve all destinations, but that’s inevitable because the Bay is mostly suburban sprawl.

Dirty, noisy, unpleasant rider experience. The terminals are sketchy. Try public transportation in other places (europe) for example. Hands down a better experience all around.

This is a result of America’s and California’s larger ills, especially extreme housing unaffordability (California) and lack of an adequate social safety net (America). Of course these symptoms are lessened or absent in countries that have addressed the core issues—the same is true in other areas besides public transportation. It’s not a BART thing, it’s a society thing.

I think of course if you compare it against the best transportation systems in the world you're going to come up pretty short with BART(Tokyo for example was AMAZING). I come from Atlanta where MARTA is a pretty big farcry from effective public transportation, so maybe that is why I don't mind BART as much...

Personally I find it super sketchy so I always avoid it and just uber.

This is valid, especially when there isn't a lot of other riders around and when you start going to some of the worse areas of the Bay(or insert almost any American city).

BART is overcrowded, but thanks to grade separation, it’s the most reliable system I’ve used.

This is a very romantic view of Europe. Some cities do it well, but try commuting into Paris, London, Brussels for a year.

Actually I lived in London and Paris and it was great compared to canada/US were I lived as well.

As somebody who works in London, you are right that infra is much better here than at least some places in the US (was shocked when I visited Austin) but the commute is brutal, overcrowded and often unreliable. For example the train line I used to rely on would fail 1-2 times a weeks such that I has to find another way into the office.

Unless you're rich you will be living 40 mins - 1hr out, I am more like 1hr20 so I can own a home that isn't tiny or in a high crime area.

The commute costs, if I pay a year in advance, ~£5k/yr, set to go up by 10-15% next yr.

Generally speaking, and especially taking into account the climate crisis, it really doesn't make much sense to do all this even when there is more infra.

It is time for more companies to accept that WFH is largely a win/win.

I lived in Lausanne and my commute was non trivial (EPFL is on the edge of Lausanne in the middle of a huge field, no housing nearby, even student housing was at least one stop away). I lived in LA and my commute was just two blocks, a 3 minute walk (got an apartment in Westwood next to UCLA). So I guess my experience is a bit different.

Europe is just as bad.

House prices are obscene in/near big cities, and commuting still sucks (used to do 2 hours each way in London!).

>"your commute is often much less cumbersome AND you can enjoy some social life after work since you're in the city"

Been "from home" for the last 20 years as I am an ISV and pretty much "enjoy some social life" without any commuting to work.

Again, this is a huge generalization. (Almost) no city in the world is built for commuting at current modern volume.

yeah no, tell that to someone living in for example paris, london or madrid, where even with decent public transport you are gonna lose on average a bare minimum of 2 hours daily commuting to work.

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