[mdorazio]

An hour commute to work is most definitely not acceptable to most, especially post-pandemic. Median commute in the US is about 26 minutes and many people are now used to working from home some or all of the time. Hour-long commutes are outliers for a relatively small percentage of people in a small number of cities.

[ghaff]

Possibly. But close to an hour commute (or more) is probably the reality most places if you work downtown in a city and don’t live within the city limits. Even within NYC getting to the financial district from Brooklyn or Staten Island is probably hitting close to that.

Average commutes in the US are brought down by urbanites who live close to the office and suburbanites who live a modest drive away from an office park.

[mdorazio]

The data does not support your statement. For example: https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute/

Sure, if you cherry pick the worst possible commutes in the worst commuting cities you're going to find pockets of ~1hr commuters, but the broader claim simply isn't true and is perpetuated by people who are themselves trying to justify their overly long commutes. The large majority of people value their time too much to put up with commutes over about 40 minutes.

[ghaff]

That data for people commuting into cities seems pretty consistent with what I said. A minority have a less than 30 minute commute. A significant majority aren’t more than an hour. I certainly agree that more than an hour isn’t common though 10-15% isn’t nothing. I did that part-time for about 18 months and it really isn’t sustainable.

Also presumably the number goes up if you exclude people who live within the metro whereas I specifically excluded that group.

[marak830]

Fair enough, my point of view may be skewed by living here for quite awhile