I was curious about this so had to check.

I live in a fairly large city with decent transit options (for the US), and (notably) a high-speed commuter rail system going into the city. I'm considering moving out of the city in a year or so, and if I do I want to be convenient to a station on that rail system.

Using a friend's address in the suburbs as a proxy (who lives near where I might be moving), Google Maps puts the travel time from there to my office at 32 minutes via commuter rail. That's with an 8 minute walk and 11 minute walk on either side, but if you assume a bike ride rather than a walk I'd imagine you can cut each of those down by at least half. The rail line has headways of a little under 15 minutes at rush hour, so that could possibly extend the trip a little bit if your timing's not perfect, but still well under an hour.

Of course if you need multiple transfers to get to your destination (and your local transit system doesn't have very short headways) that will increase your travel time substantially. The commuter line I'm thinking of takes you right into the heart of the city where many jobs are though (including my own) so that's not always a concern.

That's probably an unusually good commuter rail system. I'm about a 10 minute drive from a less frequent commuter rail, so figure 15 minutes out the door until the scheduled train comes. There don't seem to be any express trains running right now so it's over an hour into the city and that's assuming I don't need to catch a subway on the other end--which I would have to do to go to my company's city office. So, for me, at least 90 minutes--and that's for someone fairly far out (it would also take me a good 60 minutes to go in by car with nominal traffic but more like 90 anywhere near rush hour even leaving early) but convenient to a rail line.

I actually did this for a time, fortunately not every day but frequently enough. Wouldn't really have been sustainable long term.

The inherent problem here is that you work in the city, but don't live in the city. I think that with better housing policies (namely, better density), this would be far less common.

That presupposes one wants to live in "better density." A lot of people who work in cities have no desire to live there. (Or they have a partner who works in the suburbs, want the better suburban school options, etc.)

It's not like the only two options are cities and sprawling car-dependent suburbs. (Well okay, in the US those are mostly the only two options.) That suburb I mentioned in a sibling comment thread with the 30-minute rail commute is a town of about 13,000, houses there generally have backyards (though not huge front yards), there are plenty of quiet side streets, it's still walkable, etc. It's an "in between" kind of density. The problem is we've mostly legislated these places out of existence; you can't build places like this anymore in almost all of the US. I just happen to be in an area that was built up before modern zoning codes prevented it.

This video is a good overview: https://youtu.be/MWsGBRdK2N0

Of course, if you want to live super far away from the city and drive in, that's fine, I just wish that wasn't basically the only option besides living right in the city. Places like this still exist, and I think there's a lot of demand for them, but because they're not expanding (again, legislated away) the cost of living there will just keep going up because supply will never increase.

I would love for more of the housing you are talking about to exist, but one has to deal with reality as it currently exists even while working to change it.

Yes, that's true. But you do also need to work to change it, or it won't change.

Unfortunately that probably means that if you have a city job, for now you'll be stuck with either long commutes, living right in the city, or expensive housing in the remaining walkable suburbs.

Or you can move somewhere that has already figured this out. :) But I understand that's out of reach for many people; it's out of reach for me.

IMO, that also falls under "city planning". Why do the suburbs have better schools? Maybe if we had better public parks, people wouldn't feel the need to have individual private backyards? Etcetera.

Now, sure, if your partner works XX miles in the opposite direction from you, and/or you have some other unique community attachment, and you can't change jobs, you're always going to have a long commute, and that's a life choice you're going to have to make. But there's no reason that should be the norm.

You can't just handwave away the problems that city planners and politicians have already been trying to solve for decades and have failed to solve.

But when those problems are solved (not likely to happen in my lifetime) I'd be willing to reconsider raising a family in the city near me.