
Her six-hour commute each day seems crazy, but her affordable rent is not - prostoalex
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-commute-cherry-20171216-story.html
======
sethammons
Hey, a relevant article to me. I ride the metrolink from the same station she
used to ride from. I have a 35 minute drive to the Riverside metrolink, and I
take it down to Orange, another 55 minutes. This is about to expand to 1 hour
and 15 minutes when my work moves its office to Irvine.

My typical day, I wake up at 4am, drive to Riverside to do some crossfit from
5:30-6:30, and hop on the train at 7am. I get to the office shortly after 8am.
Fortunately, I leave around 4pm and am usually home by 6pm. I tend to work on
the train, but I can use that for side projects or leisure when I feel like
it.

After 5 years of doing that, I shifted to working in the office usually 3 days
a week, and then remote the last two days of the week. It really has helped.

Why do I do it? I really love where I work. It is fantastic. I also really
love where I live in the mountains of SoCal. My coworkers have a hard time
wrapping their head around dealing with wildlife like bears and things like
ice and snow in the winter :). Many also can't process that my mortgage is
under half of what they spend on an apartment (that they split with a
roommate). My wife is a part time crossfit coach and full time mother, doing
home school with our two youngest kids.

I've thought about moving close to work, but housing is just so expensive
there. Counting commute costs, I would have to spend 4x on a mortgage in the
city. I would like to do things like save money for my future and eat healthy
foods. So I stay where I'm at. And I'm happy.

~~~
erikb
your whole story and this thread has basically nothing to do with crossfit,
but you need to mention it twice? Why not say "sport"!

~~~
jnordwick
How can you tell when someone does Crossfit?

Don't worry, they'll tell you.

~~~
IgorPartola
Flight attendant: this man is having a heart attack! Is there a doctor on the
plane?

Passenger: I do CrossFit.

Flight attendant: He might be dying!

Passenger 2: I’m a vegan.

~~~
dmichulke
Can anyone explain? I don't get it.

~~~
sethammons
It is a play on the observed phenomenon that many who are either vegan or into
CrossFit bring it up all the time, even when it does not directly relate to
the situation at hand. For example, my post above. The style of my workout
routine doesn't add much to the context of long commutes.

~~~
dmichulke
Thanks. I thought there was a specific relation to people in medical
emergencies ("heart attack", "might be dying"), but those words were just
there for emphasis.

------
mabbo
I've done 4+ hours of commuting per day before, in the Toronto region. I
nearly went crazy. I'd leave at 6:45am and get home after 7pm absolutely
exhausted. I'd eat dinner, go to bed by 9, and repeat the process the next
day.

I couldn't have hobbies other than reading. I couldn't get a gym membership. I
couldn't have any real social life outside of weekends. Grabbing a beer after
work with coworkers was possible, but it meant a 3 or more hour bus trip home
instead, getting home at 11 if I left the bar by 7.

It's no way to live. After a year, my wife got a job in the city. She now
walks to work and I take the subway.

What blows my mind though was the number of people doing this. Why? So that
they're kids could have a yard. Never mind that the kids don't use the yard
and miss their parents. Any future child of mine will grow up in a condo, but
at least they'll grow up with present parents.

~~~
funnelsgun
I’ve just moved from a 3 hour commute from the suburbs to a 15 minute walk to
work.

While there are lots of positive changes to living so close to work, I’d just
like to add some of the negative ones I’ve found since I moved:

1\. A 3 hour commute would leave me exhausted when I got home. I would wake up
at 7:30, get into the office at 10:00, leave at 19:00 and be home around
20:30. I’d eat dinner and then settle down for to bed. Since moving I now have
so much time in the evenings for practising guitar, video games, reading and
social events, but I’m no longer tired in the evenings which is preventing me
from sleeping.

2\. Living in London is stressful. I’m on a quiet street, but it’s a lot of
people, a lot of light pollution and a lot of noise pollution. I’m used to
pitch darkness and dead quietness. The air is also no where near as fresh.

3\. I find that living so close to work makes it harder to unwind. Upon
getting home I’m still in work mode. The commute was a nice chance to forget
about work and calm the mind.

4\. I used to walk almost 25 miles a week, it’s less than 10 now. Sure I can
go running more often, but it requires more effort to enforce the habit.

5\. I spend so much more cash living in London on rent, food, social life and
dating, which leaves almost none for savings and motorsport/track events/cars.

~~~
mabbo
> I spend so much more cash living in London

This is the weird part for me: moving into the city saved me money overall.

In the suburbs where we lived, every person needs a car. It was a 30 minute
walk just to get to the nearest store. So we paid insurance, gas, maintenance,
etc on two vehicles. In the city, we have one car that we rarely use. If it
dies, we'll get a car-share membership. (Frankly, I'm not certain we wouldn't
save money if we just did that immediately).

The commute wasn't just long before, it was expensive: $400 CAD or more per
month. Inside the city, $140 has me covered. Utilities on the small house we
rented were nuts, especially in the winter. We pay a fraction of that now.

Adding it all up, the increase in rent was less than the saved amount.

The only real danger I find now is that I _can_ go out with friends. I have
more opportunity to spend money- but at least I'm enjoying spending that
money.

~~~
stuxnet79
I discovered this as well, that's why I moved to downtown Toronto. GTA is a
blight of suburban sprawl ... if you live outside the city and have to commute
in for work, daily, it's an absolute nightmare AND expensive. After years of
doing this the value proposition just didn't make sense anymore.

------
IkmoIkmo
I really wonder if that's the best she can do. Article states her rent is $800
instead of double that, $1600. But it also states she has $400 in commuting
costs. (and citing the environment is a reason to take the train, heh).

But she's moved into that home when her children were still kids. Surely she
doesn't need the space now that they've moved out, and surely something else
must be available.

I mean, she works 9 hour days, travels for 6... If you add a normal sleep
pattern of 8 hours, she's got 1 hour left for life, so she breaks down her
sleep structurally. But even then, there's just no time on any of her working
days to actually _live_.

In addition, it's as if she had to spend 6 hours in a room every day, unpaid,
on a noisy chair.

I can't imagine she can't optimise that. I'm hearing: I spend $400 per month
to sit in a room 6 hours a day without pay/productivity/leisure, to live in a
home with 2 redundant bedrooms, because equivalent rent is $800 more
expensive.

Surely: 1) can live in a smaller home. 2) can find a slightly better rent. 3)
can reduce her commute costs. 4) can earn money through extra work (to trade
for leisure) or get more leisure time by cutting commute costs.

~~~
electriclove
I imagine it has just become her routine now and she is comfortable with it
and another 2 years of it until she retires is no big deal to her.

------
spraak
What's crazier is only 4.5 hours of sleep each day. That makes me feel sick
thinking about. Makes me feel even more grateful for my 15 second commute from
my bed to computer :/

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Honestly, the 4.5 hours of sleep each day really makes me question the
veracity of the story, or at least if it's somehow exaggerated.

While there are a small percentage of people who genetically require less
sleep, 4.5 hours day in-day out would result in severe sleep deprivation
symptoms in the vast majority of people. I know after a couple nights in a row
with 6-7 hours of sleep I basically become pretty non-functional and I always
get sick.

~~~
ksec
It depends, there are many in working in place like Hong Kong and Tokyo
sleeping 4 hours a day. Including many of my colleagues. No idea how they do
it because i need minimum of 8 and preferably 10 for my brain to function at
decent level.

Any less sleep will means my productivity drop off rapidly and makes error and
judgement that I need days to recover from.

~~~
QAPereo
You mentioned two places which have troublesome levels of both amphetamine
abuse among workers, and in the case of Japan, has a word for “working oneself
to death.”

~~~
bitexploder
Isn't the equivalent in the US. "death march"? I am not familiar with
Japanese, so maybe it is more direct.

~~~
dfcowell
The word in Japanese is karoshi, literally "death from overwork."

"Death march" as commonly used in English-speaking nations is typically used
as hyperbole or dark humour, whereas in Japan "karoshi" is used in a clinical
sense for documented cause of death.

------
randomsearch
Don’t have the reference, but I believe that one of the most universal
determinants of happiness is the length of your commute, i.e. in cities across
the world people who commute longest are least happy.

I’ve done commutes ranging from 10 minutes walk to 90 minutes by bus, with
lots in between, and strongly recommend that minimising your commute should be
a top priority.

There’s no point living in a nice place if you don’t see it five days out of
seven. Live somewhere convenient and “commute to the country” on the weekend.

You can’t get that time back.

~~~
galfarragem
> "I believe that one of the most universal determinants of happiness is the
> length of your commute"

1000x this. I've done commutes ranging from 0 to 4,5h daily and I can even
affirm that commute discomfort is exponential: a 4,5h commute is way more
painful than a 3h commute. I would also add that the sweet spot, IMO, is not
zero but around 20 minutes of daily (walking/biking) commute.

> "Live somewhere convenient and “commute to the country” on the weekend."

Once again, 1000x this.

------
kenhwang
It's not uncommon to hear these stories in LA because the math generally works
out very favorably. That 280k house in Riverside easily goes for 2-3x where he
works in Norwalk. If you could effectively triple your pay by "working" an
extra 3 hours a day, would you do it? Especially if those extra commute hours
are by train where you could be doing a wide variety of leisure activities,
like reading, games, crocheting. No part time second job that I know of can be
more enjoyable than a hobby on a train.

~~~
awalton
> If you could effectively triple your pay by "working" an extra 3 hours a day

6 hours a day - the commute is 3 hours both ways.

In other words, she works 9 hours a day, commutes 6 more, and then has 9 more
hours to do with what she will, like sleeping (which normal folk like to do
for 6-8 hours). So she has about an hour-three hours a day of actual non-work
involved free time.

~~~
sliverstorm
Which is a sinister part of the whole "buy a nice house far away & commute".
The further from work, the less time you even get to _spend_ at that nice
house...

~~~
sjg007
A faster train would help but everyone is upset about building the boondoggle.

~~~
eru
Or more housing in LA? The sky's the limit for that. (OK, in practice NIMBYs
are the limit.)

~~~
sjg007
That would help too and robust telecommute options as well, although for some
government office workers that may be more difficult.

------
mrhappyunhappy
I did a 2hr commute from Irvine to la via Metrolink. The actual Metrolink
route took 1hr but from home to station and from union station to 8th and
grand the total was 2hrs.

People asked me why I wouldn’t just drive to work which would take me about an
hour. I for one did not care for traffic and having to stay alert for an
entire hour whereas on the Metrolink I could just fall asleep, read, listen to
podcasts or eat some food. Needless to say the commute was kind of hellish If
I had to do it for 16 years. I was happy to quit just 2 years later.

After that job I worked remote from home for several years and now freelance
full time. I feel pity for anyone who has to commute to work.

I should point out that I left work at 4 and was usually home by 6. Nobody
left as early as I did but I just didn’t care and made up my own schedule.
Nobody objected.

~~~
jmspring
I'm primarily remote as well. I bounce between the Bay Area and the mountains,
depending on time of year. That said, lately driving reverse commute down 680
towards San Jose in the afternoon, I see all those people doing what you
yourself mentioned avoiding -- multi hour commutes. In the Bay Area, heading
towards Vacaville/Fairfield/the Central Valley, there isn't a real viable non-
car option.

So much time lost.

~~~
ac29
> In the Bay Area, heading towards Vacaville/Fairfield/the Central Valley,
> there isn't a real viable non-car option.

The Capital Corridor Amtrak line goes from San Jose to Sacramento, up the East
Bay and through Fairfield/Vacaville (where there is a stop). Its the 4th
busiest Amtrak line in the country, and largely used by commuters. Connections
to Caltrain in San Jose and BART in Oakland are available. No matter how you
do it though, an 80+ mile commute into Silicon Valley isnt quick during
commute hours.

------
jacobkg
I used to commute from Redlands (60 miles east of LA) to downtown. I rode the
Metrolink train. It cost $26 round trip and was 4 hours per day. This was
better than driving which I also did. I could work on the train (Ruby on
Rails, on Rails). However now I WFH which is far superior.

We did only pay $1450 per month for a 2bd/2ba townhouse though.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Did you work on side projects or work work?

~~~
jacobkg
Work work. I used it as part of the workday so I spent about 6 hours at the
office and 4 hours on the train

------
NiklasMort
"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be
exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." \- Henry David Thoreau

------
l8again
Specifically speaking for tech jobs, why are we still commuting? I honestly
don't think why a distributed team can't just work. I have seen teams that are
entirely distributed, or with a few members remote that work great. The times
I have seen it not work is when there are other things that smell, but
remoteness of team members becomes an easy scapegoat to pin the blame.

Also, I don't think working from home as a norm is radical. Why do we all have
to swarm back and forth to some magical place? Making employees commute is an
awfully expensive proposition for quality water-cooler time.

~~~
solatic
> I honestly don't [know] why a distributed team can't just work.

So much of human communication is non-verbal. When you're building not just a
product, but the team behind the product, getting people in the same room is
often crucial for building empathy and trust.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't normalize remote work - most development
tasks require uninterrupted concentration in front of a computer and there's
no reason why somebody can't spend time at home or a co-working space or
wherever else getting it done. But team members need to meet in-person on a
regular basis in a non-formal setting to develop that team "jelling".

~~~
l8again
Thank you for this. I couldn't have said it better. I think "jelling" is
necessary, but doesn't have to happen all 5 days of the week.

------
vcool07
I've seen people doing the same in South Korea, where people used to travel
from a whole other town to work. They used to leave office around 10 in the
night, and would be back in office by 7:30 AM the next day. I used to wonder
if they even slept !

Even here at Bangalore/India, I spend close to 3 hours in travel. Fortunately
I've pick-up/drop facility to office from home. So, I just sleep in the office
cab.

It's only strange until you get used to it. Once you are used to the travel
routine, you can start to explore newer ways to make the commute time more
productive (reading/writing a book, learning a new programming language,
taking a power nap etc).

~~~
mainguy
So 3 hour commute in Bangalore is what...5km? :) It routinely took me 30-40
minutes to go about 1km...I'd have walked if there was decent sidewalk to be
found. THAT city needs to have it's planners fired...but that's a different
discussion.

------
dawhizkid
I lived in the TL in SF for 2 years. A studio in a new construction building
for $1795/mo with a rooftop (with bbq area and small gym!). My walk to work
downtown was 15 minutes.

It's actually very funny how the (perceived) worst/cheapest area in SF is
right in the center of the city with easy transportation everywhere.

Of course, after 2 years I felt mentally exhausted from walking around so many
mentally ill homeless and seeing garbage everywhere, but it was a calculus I
made at the time and looking back the pros of a short commute, cheap rent for
sf, and being centrally located with short walk to lots of transit at civic
center muni/bart outweighed the cons.

~~~
KeepTalking
TBH - It makes no economic sense for startups to get $$$$ address in downtown
SF than to massage the ego of the founders. This obsession to locate in
downtown SF is costing both the company and employees tremendously.

If they really want to be located in the city have an ego office in downtown
and open satellite offices in the east bay or south bay. Makes for happy
employees and cheaper costs.

~~~
junkscience2017
why stop there? the last "who's hiring" post made it clear to me that more and
more startups are locating outside of the Bay Area entirely

~~~
closeparen
One of the factors that permits Bay Area employees to take risks on startups
is the density of alternatives. Few people are willing to move across the
country as frequently as a normal startup employee changes jobs.

------
Clubber
I have a 30 minute commute and I dread it every morning and every afternoon. I
used to have a 10 minute one.

~~~
hamandcheese
Do you drive, or take some form of public transit?

~~~
closeparen
Public transit at commute-hours crowding levels is a vigorously and
overwhelmingly repulsive place to be. Getting away from squeezing into
standing room on the 110dB screaming-in-your-face jerking, putrid interior of
BART and onto my own feet has been incredible for my mental health, even
though the end-to-end time is similar.

Tried the Transbay buses also; I can barely stay standing since the drivers
seem to rapidly alternate between slamming on the brakes and flooring it. At
least the acceleration curve on BART isn't _designed_ to kill you.

------
hkmurakami
>But I was adamant about my kids having a better life than me."

The motivator for many a seemingly crazy, very large sacrifices. I hope things
work out well for her children!

~~~
serpix
The kids will only learn that it's okay to sacrifice yourself as well. They
will learn to do the same and the cycle continues.

If she really wants her kids to have a better life she should start from
herself.

------
spike021
I live in San Jose and commute into downtown SF three days a week (fortunate
to have a manager who allows 2 WFH/work from SJ office days a week).

My commute is typically 1.5-1.75 hours each way per day, door to door, and
that excludes days when Caltrain has some incident or another.

But right now I pay a third what I'd be paying, at least, to live closer. I
get to save a lot more money, which is nice, but the commute is awful when you
realize you're basically throwing away 4 hours a day on the commute. I'm not
the type that can get work done on the train either; it's hard enough sitting
comfortably for an hour when people elbow me because they think they own the
middle arm rest and beyond into my space.

~~~
DrScump
Half of the rolling stock has single seats in almost all of the upstairs
portion.

~~~
spike021
In the mornings when I luck out and get the older trains I always try to get
those single seats. But it's tough to luck out and get that rather than the
slightly newer stock (I take the bullets).

Wish the newer trains (and the next gen ones coming in the next decade) had
single seats. Rather unfortunate.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Aren't single seats suboptimal for getting more seated passengers.

~~~
spike021
For getting more seated passengers, sure. But you have more standing room,
which works better if the train stops more frequently, IMO.

------
Cyphase
Reminds me of Sam Cookney, who found it to be cheaper and a higher quality of
life to commute from Barcelona to London than to live in London.

His blog post:
[https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24...](https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/cheaper-
to-rent-in-barcelona-and-commute-to-london/)

A Guardian article: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-
fro...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-from-
barcelona-a-london-worker-who-makes-it-pay)

~~~
kaybe
> “But I think the lifestyle I do have now though is very sustainable.”

Considering the amount of fossil fuel that goes into flying, I don't think so.
Commuting long-distance by plane is insane on that perspective.

~~~
Cyphase
I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. The word "sustainable" does not only
refer to ecological sustainability.

~~~
kaybe
Yes, he didn't, but it should definitely be considered that he is
externalizing some costs.

------
theNJR
A nearly exact article was written about someone in SF. To the point I thought
this article was old.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-
fran...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-
commute.html)

~~~
chrisseaton
That article has some caveats - like she gets up at 2:15... but doesn't
actually leave the house until 4:00. She gets up so early because 'she likes
to take her time'.

So while she does have an arduous commute, she just chooses to get up even
earlier which makes it sound more extreme than it is.

------
Osiris30
A very similar article from August 2017 in the NYT on a 4 1/2 commute from
Stockton to SF. "A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M" \-
discussed previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15038433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15038433)

------
ksec
One reason why we need Full AV. And its lucky to be working in places where 8-
9 hours are norm. In places like South Korea, Japan and HK where you are
expected to work from 8 - 8 or more, hours of commute is literally torturing.

~~~
Jyaif
More like "One reason we need perfect VR".

------
Nitramp
When people clamour about housing development projects destroying their way of
life because they increase density etc, this is the other side of the story.
The blockade on building might keep some comfort for the fortunate owners of
those homes, but forces other, less well off people into pretty terrible
living conditions.

------
paulsutter
Only 42 minutes at 200kph

“Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon Musk

~~~
ecshafer
Unless we move to more walking and transit friendly cities with denser mixed
use housing.

Traffic is a by product of the single family detached home and lack of transit
options.

~~~
Clubber
>Traffic is a by product of the single family detached home and lack of
transit options.

That's a small part of it. Traffic is also a byproduct of increased
population, jobs consolidating into a few large cities, in the US, middle
America jobs going outside the border (gotta move to cities), requiring
workers to be in the office, even when it's mostly unnecessary, and probably
plenty I'm missing.

~~~
jacobolus
> Traffic is also a byproduct of increased population, jobs consolidating into
> a few large cities

There are plenty of large cities in the world where most people have
reasonable (e.g. <30m each way on transit) commutes.

The problem with the US is that the infrastructure and regional/urban planning
is largely designed to only support low-density development, with unscalable
and extremely space-inefficient car transportation for every trip, so when
population goes up beyond the capacity of key bottleneck roads everyone is
screwed.

If you instead build subways, BRT, pedestrian friendly streets, and both
office space and medium-density housing near transit corridors, then scaling
is much easier by just adding more frequent trains/buses.

~~~
wott
Unfortunately, it does not really work.

* The denser the area, the slower the transportation (by any mean).

* People in dense areas spend more time commuting than people in sparse areas.

* When you upgrade the infrastructure making transportation faster, people move farther, keeping their commuting time constant.

It's just that packing people around the same area is not a very good idea,
whichever way you do it; there is no true solution to the problems it causes.

~~~
adrianN
Why do you think that the transportation speed is inversely related to
density? I can ride my bike at approximately the same speed in the city as I
can in the countryside. It's just that in the city I can reach anything I need
within 30 minutes.

~~~
vishalh
This might be true for a particular city depending on population density and
commute habits of the people, but after a certain population density is
reached the premise that transportation speed is inversely proportional to
density holds true for the most part. Fixed line transport such as trains may
not be directly affected by the density but there may be a bottleneck if the
density is sufficient to saturate the lines. If the trains are running full -
this would lead to increase in wait times and longer commute time.

~~~
jacobolus
If you fill your whole city with 30+ story high rises and subways are
overwhelmed even when running cars every 1-2 minutes (e.g. some Chinese
cities), you can definitely create a bottleneck at the subway during commute
hours. That's very high density we are talking about though.

------
erikstarck
With self driving cars this might become more normal. I wonder how that will
affect urban planning and house prices.

------
EGreg
This is the problem:

[http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/health/longer-commutes-
health-...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/health/longer-commutes-health-
problems/index.html)

------
Reason077
Judging by the photos, that train looks amazingly spacious and comfortable for
a commuter train. It looks luxurious compared to British standards!

If you're going to spend 3 hours commuting, that wouldn't be a bad place to do
it.

~~~
cjensen
It's a Bombardier[1] which are the most common Coach used in California. It's
MUCH tighter than it looks in those photos. For example, at the table seats it
does not fit two laptops entirely on the table at the facing seats. It's
squishy, but serviceable.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_BiLevel_Coach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_BiLevel_Coach)

~~~
Reason077
Ahh, yes. I've ridden those before on the GO in Toronto. But the GO Train is
certainly not as well-appointed as Metrolink's version looks!

------
mfukar
4 hours of sleep and 6 hours of commute, I bet any person doing that is sane
and happy.

------
trophycase
So basically she's trading the commodity time for the commodity money.

------
stolk
I would go home for weekends, and during the week sleep in a van in the
parking garage. This works even better if you can make your work week 4 long
days, then 3 day weekend away from the city.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Sleeping in a van doesn't sound much better to me, when I was contracting away
from home I would often stay in some shitty B&B during the week. It was
miserable.

------
efrafa
First year when I was living in Ireland, I used to commute 1.5h in the
morning, and same in the evening. It was a total nightmare, and would never go
back to commute like this.

------
jswizzy
This is why I live in the South. Cost of living is low and you can live like a
king on nothing.250k will buy you a Mansion here near the beach.

------
bluekite2000
On a related topic, what are the pros and cons of having a toll on the
freeways during peak hours? I find this works well in many countries.

------
z3t4
What if you could do the commute while sleeping ? Actually every time I get
into a moving vehicle I get rocked to the sleep.

------
cornholio
The horrors of the american (lack of) urban planning and fixation with the
suburban house. A satelite view of LA area shows vast areas of suburban houses
with pools and lawns - people living in those areas don't want tall buildings
in their backyard and enjoy the appreciation in property value, but the
society as a whole is losing 10 times as much by commuting, infrastructure to
suport it and lost productivity.

------
jhiska
The real estate free market is in need of regulation and enforcement.

------
twobyfour
That she needs to commute six hours to have affordable rent is crazy.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If the place she works can't pay enough for the workers to afford to live
closer then shouldn't it be somewhere else? Presumably there's a cost saving
(or revenue increase, whatever) for them being there, but they're not pushing
on that money to the workers?

Could just/largely be a case of controlling forces leeching off workers?

------
skookumchuck
At least on train you can nap. I wonder why Cherry does not.

~~~
Cyphase
The last line of the article:

> “I chat, I sleep, I listen to music, my mind wanders, I think about the past
> and the future,” Cherry says as the train from the land of affordable living
> arrives on time, halfway through another day of compromise.

So she does sleep sometimes.

~~~
skookumchuck
I did read the article, honest! But I missed that.

------
ttul
Automated cars will make this kind of commute a lot more practical and
enjoyable. A warm, comfortable and clean Uber will pick you up and drive you
directly to your destination while you start your work day.

~~~
wbl
We've already got the technology to do that. It's called a train.

~~~
intopieces
Trains don't pick you up where you live and drop you off where you work. Self
driving cars can do this.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Trains don't pick you up where you live and drop you off where you work.

Trains manage to do that in most countries, given a few minutes walk to and
from a station.

I don't commute now but I used to commute two hours in the UK, and I walked 3
minutes to a train station, and then took a couple of trains all the way, and
then a 3 minute walk at the other end to my office. And I lived in a small
village not a major area.

Why can't they do it in the US?

~~~
mainguy
Because the UK is a bit over half the size of California. Many folks in Europe
tend to under appreciate the sheer size of the United States. To your point
though...certain metro areas are largely this way...(NY/Chicago)...but others
(LA/Detroit) are not... Not sure why some cities invest and others don't.

~~~
chrisseaton
Everyone says it's due to the size difference. That doesn't make any sense to
me!

Take just the Northern California region, then, around the same size as the
UK. Now there's no argument about size difference. The population is around a
third of the UK, so while that's less and so lower density, it isn't a crazy
difference and the major areas of population themselves where you need the
stations are high density.

I can go from any city in the UK, to any other city in the UK, via a couple of
trains pretty effortlessly. Why couldn't that be replicated in an area of the
same size and more of less the same population, in California?

Why can't it be replicated just in the Bay Area even! Why aren't there lots of
trains there?!

~~~
intopieces
>Why aren’t there lots of trains there?

1.) The Bay Area is made up of 100 cities and towns and several counties.
There is not a single “Bay Area government.” Every single transit project has
to be approved by several levels of government and funded by the state and
federal government. Moreover, that funding and consent has to last for decades
to keep the project on track. It rarely does. Every train line in the Bay Area
was the result of a fight.

2.) Trains require density to be feasible. Density increases the supply of
housing, driving down the value of existing single family homes. Owners of
single family homes store a significant amount of their net worth in the
equity of those homes. Municipalities rely on the property taxes from those
high value homes.

3.) The Bay Area is not zoned for density. Trains will not catch on here
because 60 odd years ago the people who designed the highway system did not
consider the possibility that many people would need to live close together to
make the place affordable. No one was thinking of affordable housing then.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Trains require density to be feasible

But the density of even the wider Bay Area region (the CSA) is higher than the
entire UK! How come that's dense enough for lots of trains in the UK but not
dense enough for trains around the Bay Area?

------
randyrand
*3 hr commute.

The title is off by a factor of 2.

~~~
rwesty
Both ways.

~~~
randyrand
6 hours of commuting a day.

3 hour commute.

It's assumed that a commute is both ways. "Commute" is not used in the way the
headline uses it.

