My commute is 8 km and I've got options:
- 30 min by bike
- 25 min by tram (every 7.5 min)
- 10 min by train (every 15 min) plus 10 min on foot
It's pretty nice. I think my ideal would be 20 min by bike.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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me_irl
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I love zero distance to work
I actually factor commute time and gas against my paycheck when job hunting to get a more realistic image of my take home.
Say I'm getting paid 10/hr for full time, 5 days a week at a job that's 10 miles from home, and my car gets 20mpg in city.
40hrs*$10=400
(20mpg/10miles2way trip) 5days = 5 gallons of gas a week.
Gas here is is about $3.80*5days= is $19 that comes out of the 400 we make each week so we actually get $381
But factoring commute, that's 40hrs + 10min a day travel time = 41hrs, 40min.
381/41.667=$9.14/hr
That's not even considering commute traffic, vehicle maintenance, fluctuating gas prices, out just basic ass income tax. At the end of the day, this job is only paying about $7.15/hr which is less than I'd make walking to a minimum wage job within 5min.
Coincidentally, this is why it's so hard for rural communities to get out of poverty, at point I was doing 1hr, 43min in commute to a job that paid 10.30/hr 5 days a week. I was barely scraping by and to take any other job was going to net me negative money.
I do it easier:
- If they mandate in-office time at all, find the office.
- Hit those rent sites to show the rent of a modest 2bd apartment within 10min walk of that (the walk score distance-map was so great for that)
- Banks say that should never be more than 25% of your base salary
- If that's not the base salary for a starting position with minimal expectations, then the company isnt paying enough.
Add a shitload more if America because #mercenaryHealthcare
Correct, but it's also the time you lose when commuting, which also forces you to sit still. If you work 8 hours/day and have a 1 hour commute, then you're effectively locked up for 10 hours per day.
So currently I'm choosing between two jobs, one is a 15 min walk, the other with a 1 hour drive. It's going to be the 15 min walk, easy, and the 1 hour drive would need a significantly higher paycheck for me to consider it seriously.
My commute sucks ass. With traffic it's about 3 1/2 hours a day in the car.
But I do get a $300/month gas stipend and the job does pay about $16/hr more than I made doing a similar job with about 2 hours a day in traffic. So the money part works out. I also live alone, so there's less reason to want to spend more time at the house than if I had a family.
My spouse and I are about to move to a new apartment that is in a very walkable area of town that we love, and is a 0.7mi walk from my office. Her office is still a driving commute, however she doesn't mind driving nearly as much at me. I hate it. We also got rid of our second car a few months ago since I bike to work every day. For the new place going from a 2.5 mi/10-15 min bike ride to a ~10m walk. So excited.
I live thousands of km from my job and it's very nice.
Yes: Work from home.
But: Your mom you have to live with now thinks you're available for chores 24/7.
Just a reminder that sometimes, you can just walk between your house and the office. Give it a look, maybe you can achieve it and save on public transport, and more importantly, combine your commute time and your gym time into podcast or music time and enjoy yourself while you kill two birds with one stone.
Source : Walked to work , 45 mins each way. 1 hour 30 exercise every day, went through so many game design podcasts and Devin Townsend's addiction albums.
45 min drive both ways, no public transport. 🇺🇲
It's about 10 feet from where I sleep to where I work. I love my commute.
I either wake up, roll over and start working from home or go across the street and work in the office. My apartment complex is literally across the street from the office.
Twice that for me. I’m extremely lucky that I can work from home. I can’t imagine commuting in a car again.
I'm so sorry your commute is so long. My condolences
I just moved to a place that is a 3.5 minute walk to work. Went from 250 square foot studio with a 45 minute commute to a 3 bedroom house a block away from the office. It's not all good though. Sometimes there's traffic on the way home. Meaning I could have to wait up to a minute for a big enough gap between cars to cross the street.
A minute delay?! That's like a 30% increase in travel time! Completely unacceptable
Good taste, I prefer Epicloud but I might relisten the earlier albums now
Those albums helped me make adjustments in my eating problems, and they were nicely self contained things. I enjoy genre smear as much as anyone (my favourite albums are by Estradasphere and Igorrr) but I felt some of the albums after that quadrology were a bit less coherent and with a clear purpose.
I'm glad you're doing better now. Music might've helped, but remember it's still you that did the change. Thank you for the recommendations! We all have a band that helped them through tough times - mine happened to be Dream Evil (till 5th-ish album). Although I don't pay as much attention to the lyrics. I've tried most with Dream Theater, but with my understanding of English I need to listen and read to get anything.
Yeah, the good part about my 1.5-2h commute per direction is that it takes that time no matter what mode of travel I use, bike, train or car
On summertime I really do enjoy riding that with bike, when I happen to go to office
Why do you live so far away?
Multiple factors. Cheaper living, wife's workplace closer, closer to nature and me working mostly from home is basically it
*looks across the living room at the office from my bedroom*
Nope - I don’t think so…
*takes the hover board as usual*
Wall-E?
Id hace to walk 15km
I did this at one point. 3 miles. just about right.
I think not only the distance but the method of commuting. I don't work every day, but when I do get a pretty nice 30min train ride with 20min of cycling, each way. Gives me time to do little excercising and book reading. Using a car would be slightly faster, but I can't really do anything apart from listening to something so its not that appealing anyway, maybe in the winter when it's -20°c and a snow storm but most of the year My commute is just fine
Living in a city where you can commute by mass transit is such a joy. You can get on and off wherever you want, for whatever reason. On the train and feel like stopping at the library or the pub on the way home? Hop off early. Feel like taking a long walk to think through things? Take a different transit line that takes you to the far side of a scenic walk. Have to meet up with people at a third place? No need to worry about having to find and pay for parking at that place. Want to play video games or read a book on your commute? Go for it. If you're lucky you might even get in a nap.
Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Trains can be delayed due to technical problems, people parking their cars on the train tracks, etc.. Unexpected delays happen with cars too though, so it's really a wash.
God I miss living in a city with good transit.
I love the distance between work and home, I have about and hour's worth of commute each way, and the travel time is just what I need to wind down after work and get into "home-mode."
It gives me time to enjoy youtube videos on the buss, and best of all, I don't stay in an area that constantly reminds me of work
Wouldn't it be better to spend this hour getting into home mode, idk, at home? And what's so great about commuting to work for an hour in the morning, so you could wind up and get into work mode?
Work commute is time you aren't really free to do what you want, yet you generally don't get paid for.
For me, distance to work is important, I don't want to spend time in the areas where I work when I am off work.
Also, while I love working in the city center, I absolutely don't want to live there.
It's certainly your right to feel this way. But interesting to wonder why you feel like you need work and home too be a whole hour commute apart.
They don't have to be a whole hour apart, 30 min would be fine, it is just that when I bought my apartment, the best one I could find for me was located a fair bit outside the city.
Exactly. Wfh will ALWAYS be superior because you have truly free time, and truly get off work at x time, and truly start work at x time.
A commute is unpaid labor. Lunch in a room of coworkers is hardly relaxing. Collaboration over text is just fine, thanks, and if it isnt, a video call works just fine too.
Not to mention my monitors and internet is faster at home than work, and i dont have to get dressed in the morning.
An hour each way? No fucking thank you.
If the tradeoff is that you can afford a house in the countryside instead of an overpriced appartment in the city, I think I’d accept the long commute, I’d just press for fewer days at the office and be happy
It suits me just fine, I work in the center of the capital, but I live 30km outside the city, with public transport it is a lovely break between work and home.
If I drive it usually takes 30-45 min, but then I need to find a parking spot, get stressed when driving in the city and can't relax and zone out on my commute home.
My current situation is perfect for me.
Personally I assumed that you meant you had a 1 hour driving commute. Which sounds terrible. But the fact that it is by transit makes it much more appealing. Personally I don't think I'd mind it since it is built in reading time
Yeah, that is what I do, I catch up on youtube, browse lemmy, and in general just wind down.
Having good decompression time after work is essential. When I had a car, I found myself to be very irritable after work if I drove home. However when biking ant walking I'm way less stressed out compared to driving (I hate driving), and can decompress. So I don't really feel irritable after
agreed. personally 30. minute to an hour is a sweet spot for me too. its a 'me' time that i rarely get these days
This is true but doesn’t guarantee a happy work life, I moved 5 minutes from my office and while my commute is much less taxing, I still dream about my company(which is thought of by most of the public as one of the good ones, which is a laugh) going bankrupt along with the full capitalistic nightmare system that props it up. Fuck jobs and how they’ve been foisted upon us as the normal way of living most of your waking life
I work right acriss the street from my apartment and my quality of life sucks, so I guess I need a job all the way in New York (I live in California).
On the other hand, a remote job somewhere that pays California wages would be the dream. It'd be wonderful to live in a good, affordable house in the Midwest while working remotely for some Silicon Valley firm.
Thanks friendly loading screen tip
I commute an hour each way right now, and it fucking sucks. I’m trying to find a new job closer to home
It's about 10 feet from where I sleep to where I work. I love my commute.