>my lifestyle is simply incompatible with life in an apartment or tiny, semi-detached town house

But your lifestyle is compatible with spending 15 hours a week (60 hours a month, 700 hours per year, or the equivalent of 17 additional 40-hour workweeks annually) commuting?

It depends on the person, for me the restrictions of living in a flat (no music, no friends over late, no ability to knock down walls or paint) are a larger problem for me than a long commute. I have people around almost every night for dinners, movies etc. and can't see myself getting rid of that for the convenience of a short trip. Having enough space and green around for a nice place to have a family is also important.

It's probably less for him and made for family. People will sacrifice a lot for their kids.

I'm certainly not going to judge anybody's decisions when it comes to raising their children, but a long commute means many hours away from the kids. When they're grown, will they be more likely to remember the nice yard and school or the extra time spent with Mom and Dad?

I wouldn't mind commuting 1-2h if it was work hours, i.e I leave at 8 and drive + do phone calls, or work on a train for 1.5h, get to the office 9.30, work until 3.30, work 1.5h on my way home and can pick kids up at 5.

If I had to leave at 6 or come home at 7 when the kids are sleeping it wouldn't be worth it regardless of what job it is or how nice the house is.

You don't seem too annoyed by the commute, do you have a family? I don't yet, but I can't imagine basically not seeing my children because I spend the whole day working.

Have you looked into working remotely?

He's from Sydney. In Sydney, having a significant number of your colleagues (and yourself) doing monstrous commutes is incredibly normalised. The house prices and transport situation is just a nightmare.

You tend to not realise just how weird it is unless you moved to Sydney from somewhere else, or until you leave Sydney to go somewhere else...

/spent a year or so living there myself: my commute was actually about 30 mins (Hornsby - Chatswood), SO's was about 1 hour 15 mins each way into the CBD once walking time was added on...

That sounds very accurate from my experiences so far. The trains are significantly better than busses which is why I'm so excited for the new rail system going in near my house. To answer the question above, no, I don't have a family (yet) but I imagine this would make the decision significantly different in favour of time to spend with them.

As a visitor, catching trains in Sydney was great, but taking busses often meant very unpredictable timing, and extremely long travel times to get anywhere. I ended up taking a little over 2 and a half hours from the CBD to North Ryde.

How do you spend your commute? I used to do something like that, it nearly drove me mad over 4 years.

My commute used to be either an hour by by car (10min) and light rail or 20-40min by motorcycle (carpool lane + dodging through traffic as I feel).

Sometimes the gloom and rain of Seattle just meant I couldn't bear to ride that day. Sometimes I needed to get some emails punched out or I just REALLY wanted to read a book. Even though it took longer I almost always felt more relaxed when I got home from riding the light rail. But I usually felt more ready to work when I rode in.

By the end of my time at that company I was riding my motorcycle about 90% of the time because I couldn't bare to give up 2+ hours a day to my commute.

When I left and started my own company the first thing I did was find an office space I could ride my bicycle to. It's actually faster to ride my bike than drive.

I commuted to a job in the big city (about 45 minutes away by car, an hourish by bus) for about 8 months.

I started the job in the fall, and riding the bus was fine, but as May rolled around and I saw the weather getting better and better and thinking about all the time I was stuck in a bus instead of outside, I realized it wasn't going to work out. (There were other things going on at the company too, but this was definitely the straw that broke this commuting camel's back.)

Living in the Pacific NW as an avid motorcyclist- it's been a semi bittersweet transition. It was 22.5mi from driveway to (free motorcycle) parking garage- which meant I was riding on average 425mi a week. I used to average MAYBE 2500mi a year, excluding summer road trips, before commuting every day on my bike.

Especially during the spring and summer- I missed that nice, gorgeous, Seattle morning ride as the morning transitioned from pre-dawn light. I'm probably going to have to find a really inneficient and long way to get to the office some mornings now that I think about it.

I've got a great pair of noise cancelling headphones I listen to, and I bought an iPad to read the news and watch some TV on the way. Occasionally I've just slept, but I've found that a lot harder on busses recently.

As an American you just assume people are talking about driving when they talk about commutes. That made your comment horrifying to read at first. :)

Driving would make it a 2hr+ trip both ways, the main road between the western suburbs and Sydney (the M2 motorway) is gridlock in peak hour.