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Comment by bkrausz | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately the offer in Boston is actually about 10mi outside of Boston, so I'd still need a car.

I'd recommend double-checking mbta.com and seeing if the commuter rail or something would get you to work. Public transportation thins out outside the more urban parts of metro Boston, but in some cases it reaches much further than 10 miles outside the city proper.

I believe it's actually possible to get from Boston to Washington D.C. via public transportation (with a little bit on Amtrak between Providence and western Connecticut), so yeah, it reaches much further than 10 miles. ;-)

The problem is time. I live in Bedford, and while it's technically possible to get a bus+subway from here to the financial district, it takes about an hour and a half. That's compared to 35 minutes driving (no traffic), ~55 minutes driving (with traffic), an hour driving to Alewife then taking the red line in, and an hour and a half for biking to Alewife and taking the subway in. Not much point.

Commuter rail is similar - it's like 1.5-2 hours to take the commuter rail from Concord to Porter and then transfer to the red line. Might be a bit better closer in to the city, but commuter rail coverage is a bit spotty - it's faster to drive to Alewife from Bedford than it is to get to the nearest commuter rail stations in Concord or Lincoln.

I recently moved from Arlington ($1200 a month for a huge two-bedroom, off-street parking, back yard, etc.) to a place in NH for $300 a month. In Arlington, I was 15 min walk from Alewife and then 10 min subway ride to my office in Central Square (or a 15 minutes total if I drove).

I had planned on taking the Lowell train to Boston after I moved to NH, but that was when gas was $3.50+ a gal and it would have cost me $25 for gas round-trip. Commuting on the train would have added about 2 hours a day to my commute vs driving in.

My work allows me to be very flexible with my schedule, so I've been driving in later to avoid rush hour and leaving work after 8pm. With gas less than $2, it costs me less to drive in than it does to take public transportation, plus saves me 2 hours a day.

Time = Money (or sanity, at least).

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