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.
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.
Why?!
I won't walk for 5 minutes sandwiched between a fast road strip-mall parking lots, industrial facilities, or open fields.
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)
It's fine if you walk you can think about anything, but if you drive a car you waste your time.
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.
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. :-)
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.
I cannot even imagine not being able to rewatch part of a lecture as a student. That seems incredibly bad.