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Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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'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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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. :-)

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 :)

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.

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

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.

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.

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