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Nobody actually does this commute 5 days a week, 45-50 weeks a year. It's either someone who does it sporadically but regularly (e.g. every other Monday or something for a few years) or briefly while finding something less insane (for a few weeks, maybe a month or two).

I had a job with an effective ~4-hour round trip commute, from one major city to another in both my car and a train, but only had to do it once a month.



I used to have a similar commute into NYC. I lived about a 10 minute walk from the train station and my office was another 10 minute walk from Grand Central Station. Round trip was about 4 hours. I did the commute about 3 days per week but saw tons of people on the train that did it every day. I saw a guy talking to the conductor saying it was his last time commuting after THIRTY YEARS. I imagine most of those people were driving to the train station and then taking another subway once they made it into the city, adding a considerable amount of time to the already brutal commute.

I only lasted a year before I went fully remote.


I take the 510 AM train from Albany to NYC about once a month. There’s a dozen folks who are on that train enough that I recognize them or chat with them. There’s a few who board at Hudson too.

It’s a mix of lawyers, construction guys and others like FDNY guys.


The OP was referring to a 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year dystopia:

"Even if you don't want to live in your car that the pressure will still be exerted on you because you'll be competing with people that do."

Which is why so many folks are mocking the idea.


If I go into the city for a customer visit (not frequent/not rare), I'm 2 hours going in whether mostly train or mostly car. And about the same going home by train and maybe more like an hour+ by car.

I did have a job that was about 90 minutes door-to-door each way (train schedules were a bit better then) but even then "only" had to do it about 50% of the time. Wouldn't have been long-term sustainable.




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