While I agree with what you've said about cars, I'd consider it just as crazy to have a 30-minute or 50-minute commute by alternative transportation as an equally long commute by car. Either way, you waste a significant portion of your life going back and forth to work.

If you have a commute longer than 5-10 minutes, and you don't work from home on the vast majority of days, consider changing either your work location or your home location. That holds regardless of your preferred mode of transport.

I think that a 30 minute walk or bike ride is not "wasted" the same way 30 minutes driving would be. Driving can be a huge stress, especially in rush-hour commuting traffic. A walk or a bike ride is a chance to unwind.

Some people consider driving a means of unwinding the same way. Personally I'd consider all three a waste of time compared to actually being at the desired location. Couldn't you unwind more easily at home?

I used to bike 50 minutes twice a day (13 and a half miles each way) through London - and I can honestly say I loved it every day.

Some days I'd wake up feeling tired and grumpy, but once I was on the bike I'd be fine. Some days it would start raining just before I was going to leave for home, but still once I was one the bike everything melted away.

I totally agree everyone is different, and living closer to work would have been nicer. But by living far away I was able to: afford a house not a flat, afford a car for when I wanted to take journeys that actually cost more by train in the UK, live near huge green open spaces - all the while working for the UKs biggest media organisation and getting all the benefits of that and of living in London.

I ate listening to music on a commute, so it was 50 minutes of silence, 50 minutes of either planning my day or shaking off my day. When I'd get home I'd be totally chilled no matter how my day had been, and I'd get to work with a full plan of my day - or if I wasn't busy I'd just let my mind wander onto a million what ifs.

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I currently can't cycle and I really miss it - zoning out on the tube isn't the same, working out isn't the same, and it's hard to force yourself to cycled 25 miles a day if you aren't aiming to get anywhere.

But I can totally see how you could get the same from a car journey, or from just being at home earlier.

For me I have to work where I work now (central London), and I love living where I live.

Man I need to get back on my bike!

God, I love driving. If I'm trying to think through a hard problem, I hop on the freeway and let my unconscious mind work through it while my conscious mind is focused on driving. It's as good for problem solving as sleeping is.

Biking, while healthy, is much more stressful for me. There's too much to watch for, too much that can go wrong too quickly, and no safety net if it does. I can't stop my mind of thinking what would happen if the rim collapsed right now, or if a squirrel ran out in front of me, or if the seat or handlebars broke... any system fails in a car you're still pretty well protected. On a bike, you're screwed. Doesn't stop me from commuting by bike, though.

I love driving... on open, uncongested highways at night. I can't stand driving to commute, straining my foot muscles in a maddeningly irregular pattern of pressing and releasing the brake as the cars ahead of me expand and contract at zero-to-five miles per hour.

Don't submit to playing the stop-and-go traffic jamming game. http://trafficwaves.org/ Even in rush hour I make a goal to press the brake as little as possible which simply means finding the average speed of the cars in front of me and going slower than it. It's a much less stressful way to drive and since I have a manual also requires less work.

I actually do my best to maintain a constant speed, though because of the large window in front of me, it often doesn't last long before someone merges in and sends me back to stop-and-go. I'm just glad I have transit options available.

A former roommate had a similar complaint. My response was "Your large window in front of you wasn't large enough." But I've also had a mile in front of me thinking the way ahead was clear only to turn a bend and brake really hard at the sight of yet another traffic jam. So it's not a perfect solution unfortunately. I want to see a startup that tracks people's phone and car GPSes (or other means of locating them since you don't need a GPS to get a cell phone's location) and offers a screen to put in the car or a tablet/phone app that shows you the locations and speeds of everyone in your vicinity it can and offers advice like "See this traffic jam 3 miles ahead? That's why you should slow down to 40 now like the new sign says you should do." (Eventually the app can control the car's speed itself.)

Transit is a good solution as well if time isn't important to you or you have a good transit system that doesn't take an hour to go a mere several miles. I've been up to BC's Vancouver a few times and I'm jealous of their skytrain.

Try commuting in a manual :) You can use the brake less by downshifting (which helps relieve congestion, people are seeing less brake lights), but talk about irregular foot movements. Need to be off the clutch to slow your car using the engine, but on it to slow your car using the brakes, off the clutch on the gas to start moving, then (clutch in) into second (clutch out) but whoa hold on, (clutch in) back into first (clutch out to slow down) and we're stopped (clutch in, brakes on, shift to neutral, clutch out).

Then we go again (clutch in, into gear, clutch out+gas), and it continues. If everyone was forced to drive a manual, we'd have less slowdowns (and less DUIs, IMO) just from the thinking and movement it requires. No one would want to stop.

Sadly, I don't know if this is true - all cars in England are manuals pretty much and we still have plenty of traffic and drink driving. Manuals are more fun though :)

True, this only works for places where people don't normally drive manual transmissions. Once the populace learns, this will no longer be effective.

I'm all for making driving more involving. If you have to use both feet and both hands to drive, it gets harder to eat a burger and apply your makeup and type on your laptop and wank all at the same time.

I doubt we (in the UK) have the same Drink Driving problem that the USA has, but I wonder if that is more to do with the distance to get to a good pub? It's often walking distance in the UK.

That said there are many nice country pubs, and I rarely see /drunks/ leaving them, though I am sure a fair few are over the limit.

Agreed. I think commuting by bike on trails, small streets, or separated from traffic is must less stressful than biking on a busy street. Even taking a bus is a bit more stressful than driving (for me) because the buses are so infrequent. Missing a crucial bus can cause an extra 30-45 minutes of travel time.

A half hour of gentle exercise with changing scenery is better for relieving my stress than sitting in my home. YMMV, of course.

A 30 minute walk to work is great. It ensures that you get some exercise in before you get to work. If it's a nice area, you can drink some coffee, listen to a podcast and enjoy the walk. I'd much rather have 30 minute walk to work than a 10 minute drive.

You probably also don't see the point in home cooking when you could eat out, or growing your own vegetables when you could just buy them in a grocery store?

That is doable if you're single and live alone. When you and your preferred room mate work at different locations, it becomes impossible for both of you to live within 5-10 minutes of your workplace.

True, you spend a lot of time going back and forth, but while commuting by car requires that you focus 100% on driving (and the same goes for biking or walking), doing it by train or bus lets you do actual work if all you need is a laptop.

I take public transport for exactly this reason. I have also found being on public transport somehow makes me feel incredibly focused and productive.

True enough. While you'll still have some overhead due to the walking in between, you'll probably end up with something comparable to a 5-10 minute commute. Still not ideal (due to the working conditions), but not a complete waste of time.

Firstly, I agree: working within a few minutes of your home is the greatest luxury money can buy.

That said, my two favorite activities while on a train: 1. Read. 2. Sleep. I really miss sleeping on the train in the mornings (my current commute is too short for a quick nap). I always felt so refreshed afterwards.

Neither of these is really feasible when commuting by car; having them available to you makes a world of difference between cars and trains or busses.

When my commute was Too Long (~50 minutes), I would even occasionally program on the train. That's harder to do, though, because you need a seat, and if you commute during vaguely normal hours (7-11am, 6-10pm) a seat on the subway is a rare commodity.

I had a friend come to visit a few months ago. He came over from Finland (Helsinki) with his fiancee to my mid-size Midwestern city. He says he had explained it to her previously but I guess she didn't understand that there is really no public transport here. She doesn't have a drivers license because she's never needed one.

While my friend and I were out and about, he got a call from her asking where the train station was. The only train here is Amtrak...