this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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It's still bad.
My old commute was a 25-30 minute drive. For a while though, I had to do it by public transport.
I'd be walking for less than 10 minutes because both my house and my work were close to the train station. The rest of it was on 4 different trains, but all within one metropolitan area. The changes were no more than 5 minutes each, pretty good really. However, the number of stops and the number of changes killed any progress. The end result was that it took 1h45m to 2h.
Changing a 8hr + 2x30m day into an 8hr + 2x2h day is a significant change in lifestyle. Losing 3hr day means you don't enjoy your evenings, you don't socialise, and life is only work. It's miserable.
On a different job I worked at I could get there with just 1 train. That was about 35 minute drive or 55 minutes by train once you included the walk (again about 10-15 minutes total). Even with that you're asking yourself "Why am I not driving?".
I assume this is London.
And that's fine, the train commutes were not for your specific needs. Weird that you had to switch three times to get to your destination, including the walks.
But this is hardly the norm.
If you want to have counter-anecdotal evidence presented, my daily commute used to be 5 metro stops worth 9 minutes of ride and 5 minutes of walking (in total). By car it was about the same, except for the added inconvenience of finding and paying for parking. This was Budapest.
Then there was 15 minutes of train coupled with 25 minutes of walking, 20 to the train station at a brisk pace and then another 5 to the office through the underground maze. By car it'd have been 15 minutes, not counting traffic. Which there always was. Because this was Toronto, the home of "just one more lane, bro". So in total it was more like 40.
My current commute is 20-40 minutes by a single bus. Only ~2.5km. It'd be the same by car, because the route is entirely at the whims of the traffic.
However it doesn't matter, because I also bike, and it's my preferred mode of transportation. Biking in cities that do have minimal infra (such as well placed arteries) and culture for it, as in driving lessons focus on awareness and there is no us vs them mentality, is like IRL cheat code to commuting. You are faster than transit and traffic, you get some well needed exercise and de-stress time. And you get to exactly from where you leave from to where you want to go to, all while saving a dime.
Obviously biking is not for everyone. But if a fat dude with asthma in his late forties with two young children can do it, the barrier for entry doesn't seem that steep.