Well, I'll take it on good faith that this was bad for you.

But lets see my last few commutes.

* Now; walk 15 minutes (mid/small-size european city; population 350k)

* 4-8 years ago: 20-50 minutes on tube (living close to work was prohibitively expensive) (this was London, so, large city)

* 8 years ago: 40 minutes (Helsinki, pop: 1.4m)

* 10 years ago: 1hr 20m (mid-size UK city; pop 1m)

So although recently, yes I have had better commute times, it's not uncommon or insane to have commutes that stretch 40 minutes.

Of those commutes, the only one that would be improved by having a car would be the 10yr one (I was going to college and couldn't have a car then, it would be impossible to pay for it barring everything else)

The others could really not improve, London traffic is insane, the Helsinki train system moves significantly faster than traffic, I walk today, and if I were to cycle it would take me even less time.

Unless automated cars really become good enough the need for self owned cars will always be there. I live in Singapore which has a very good public transport system and it's extremely expensive to own and keep a car so most people use public transport and 30-40min or more Transit time to work and school is common. So your 40 min time school commute doesn't sound that bad to me.

Fair enough, I'm happy to turn this into a Monty Python sketch. Frequency also matters. For my particular route this was roughly once an hour during business hours, and nothing after 8pm. This is not so rare [0].

[0] not where I grew up, privacy, but comparable: https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/elibrary/Content/Internet/544/931...

For those who didn't catch your (brilliant and well-placed) Monty Python reference:

Four Yorkshiremen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZDB9h7BLY

I think we can safely say that different levels of urbanization can have different policies. Or we could unify it under land value taxes ;)