[saalweachter]

There are definitely trade-offs involved, and I cannot emphasize "well-managed" in "well-managed commute" enough.

For anyone considering it, I'd definitely encourage you to keep the following factors in mind when designing a super-commute:

  1.  Workplace flexibility; if your workplace requires you
      to be a butt in a chair from 9-5 (or 9-6), it is going
      to be difficult to engineer a workable commute.
  2.  Can you engineer an early or late commute?  If you
      can arrange things to be home for either breakfast or
      dinner, and see your family for a couple of hours in
      the morning or night, it's way less isolating.
  3.  Stick with mass transit; there is a big difference
      between 90 minutes in a car and 90 minutes on a train.
  4.  Optimize your work arrival/departure for train/bus
      times.  If you have to wait 45 minutes for a train
      after getting off work, your commute is 45 minutes
      longer.
  5.  Keep a rigid schedule.  Commuting 2+ hours each way
      with tight margins means you can rarely work late,
      come in early, or go out after work with your coworkers.
  6.  When considering a new home/job with an extreme commute,
      evaluate your entire commute.  If you only consider
      eg the train time, and not the trip to and from train
      stations and wait times, you will get in over your
      head.  Two houses in the same town may have radically
      different door-to-doors for two different jobs in the
      same city.

It's not for everyone, and if you can't design it well it eats into every part of your life, but my point is just that, if you do it right, an extreme commute ... may not be the most salient part of your life. You go to work, you spend time with your family, and you get whatever you were trying to get by living 80+ miles from your workplace.

And you come to relish your time on the train, where you sit quietly and don't talk to anyone or do anything.