And it's not even as neat as a 2 hour ride to the office. It's take a short drive to the train station with a little bit of buffer--because the next train will be an hour later. Take the train. Take the subway where I probably won't have a seat. Walk about 15 minutes.

So it's a pretty reasonable transit system, albeit with reduced schedules (and eliminated express trains) since COVID. But it's still a haul to go in for a day even though it's a pretty reasonable 1 hour drive outside of busy times.

I have a similar, but not as bad, situation here. About a 20 minute walk to the bus station. If I go very early, I hit the reduced schedule and so I could wait up to an hour (typically less, that’s the max). Then the ride is around a half hour.

These sort of transit systems seem reasonable-ish in comparison to, say, the rest of the US (if that is where you are from—it is the only standard I have to compare against). But it is actually not really practical if it wipes out 4 hours of your day. I mean, assuming your are some sort of programmer (since this is hackernews), then your time is probably worth around $40-$50 an hour at least… $200 a day should be able to buy a better option somehow.

I like my trip: it is good to take a walk anyway, there’s a nice coffee shop near the bus stop, and I usually get a seat so I can do something work related… but even still is is just on the cusp of not really being practical, and I’m probably giving it a mental discount for ideological affinity.

A (long) time ago, I commuted into the city (Boston) maybe a couple days/week on average for a job I had for about 18 months. (Took about 90 minutes each way--in that case, I could just walk to my office from the train station.) It was sort of tolerable because it wasn't every day. But I still don't think it would have been sustainable long-term.