I would define a long commute as anything longer than about 35 minutes one way.
Knowing this, do we have anyone here who engages in such a commute daily? Can you share your feelings about it - especially if you exclusively use mass transit?
I used to commute two hours each way. The kicker was, it was only 47 miles. LA freeways at rush hour.
It’s 110 miles from my house to the office. I drive it thrice a week, telecommuting the other two days.
I’d rather not have such a long commute, but it’s not so bad. I’ll either drive all the way in, or park at the Park & Ride and take the bus the remaining ten miles downtown. It gives me time to listen to NPR on the way to work and on the way back. But I could do without the heavy traffic between Everett and Seattle, and Seattle and Marysville.
60 minutes one way is my commute, about 54 miles. I drive it.
It’s all rural, through hills and valleys, and over a marsh. I like that bit, except when the roads get dicey in winter. But heck, that’s only 4 or 5 months out of the year…
Otherwise, the commute can be somewhat tiresome, but with my iPod and NPR, I am kept both amused and edified. That and wildlife spotting: Bald eagles, sandhill cranes, deer (rural rats), turtles, foxes, geese, llamas, horses, and once a fish.
It’s worth it to have a job that allows me to maintain the ancestral home. I could move closer to work, but I’d have to sell said home, which consists of 70 acres on a lake. And there really aren’t any jobs closer that would allow me to keep up the property.
My commute in L.A. was similar. But I rode a motorcycle, so I didn’t have to deal with traffic jams. 
It takes me somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour to get to work, depending on how I choose to get there. I live in what I like to call “the ghetto of Seoul” (Haebangchon, for those of you who know the area) and the public transit to and from here isn’t great. The fastest way for me to get to work is to take a taxi to the nearest Green Line station and then take the subway. Either that or take a bus, then the subway, then transfer once to a different line. OR I could walk to the nearest subway station, but it’s a fifteen minute walk and I’d have to transfer twice to get to work.
I’ve had long commutes all my life though. It took me almost an hour to get to my high school (public bus) and an hour and a half to get to my university for my first two years (then we moved, and it was more like an hour and 15 mins) - bus and subway. My first real job was a 40 minute commute and when I was teaching community college out in the suburbs near Chicago I had to take a bus for a solid 30-40 minutes, then a train for another 15-20 minutes, and then a bus for another ten, and that wasn’t counting waiting times. It was hell in the winter.
I don’t mind long commutes too much, unless I can’t sit down and/or it’s really crowded. In Korea it’s common to get molested if the subway is jam packed - just last month I was in a ridiculously packed subway - the kind so packed that even if the train jerks to a stop you don’t fall over because there’s no room to - and I discovered someone persistently trying to get his hand under my skirt. But when you’re so crowded that you can barely turn your head, it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the pervert. My mom used to tell me to carry around a needle and stab the fuckers, but I’m too afraid of stabbing an innocent bystander. Or myself.
Anyway, it’s not so bad. I listen to a lot of podcasts.
I used to commute about 30 miles on the Long Island Expressway (“the world’s longest parking lot”). There were times when it took over 3 hours, each way. I don’t miss those days at all.
About 1:45 each way door to door. I walk about 15-20 minutes to the train station. There’s always a bit of a wait (10 min?), another 55 minutes on the train, a 10 minute walk to the building where I work, then I count getting situated. I don’t mind the train ride (I can sleep), but the walk can be brutal in the winter (now), when it is -1 degrees out and noone shovels the sidewalks so I have to walk in the street.
I have to factor in the fact that I am saving money on gas, insurance and parking, ever since we became a one-car family (when the clutch on my pickup fried a couple years ago). Can’t afford another vehicle right now, so I am hoofing it for the forseeable future.
I have had two long commutes in my life.
1st From
San Jose Ca to San Mateo Ca about 40 miles? Worked the felief shift. 2 nights and 3 days. On two of the days I drove 3 miles to the train station on one end and walked the other. I did not mind the train ride gave me time to rest or read. I hated the days that I had to drive.
2nd time to the Preciedo in San Francisco. It was a miserable drive. Over an hour each way. I had purchased a pick up truck that I thought would last till I retired. It now has over 120,000 miles on it.
3 years ago I started a job in San Jose, I commute with my wife, she drives me both ways. All I could think about my last two weeks at the old job is I am getting my life back. It would take a major wage increase for me to ever consider going back to that commute.
When I was 24ish, I was living in Chatsworth and got a job at the Beverly Center. Oh, and I don’t drive, and (it being a retail job) I worked fairly nonstandard hours.
The bus route was 3 hours each way. I got a lot of reading done.
Holy cow…well…I’ve done the 1.5 hour highway one-way trips; the ‘catch the bus at 4.30 so I can get downtown, catch the next bus, then another one to get to work’ thing <about 2 hours one-way>; my last two jobs have had me at about a 45 minute drive one-way, with the difference being that one job was 14 miles away in the Chesapeake Bay area, and the current one is 40 miles away but mostly highway.
The stop-and-go city driving <that took an hour or MORE, often as not, if it even looked like rain…which was all the time…> drives me frigging nuts. But I’ve lived in few areas with truly decent rapid transit.
Of them all, I prefer the nice highway cruises.
I’ve done hour-long commutes on public transit before. When I lived in Toronto, I’d take a subway and connect to a bus that went to the end of the line. Total time in good traffic was about an hour, though ironically, the same car trip took twenty minutes. But in those days, I didn’t own a car.
It wasn’t fun. The subway and the bus were generally packed, and getting a seat on the bus was unlikely unless I was near the head of the line at the bus stop. If the subway was delayed, as occasionally happened, I’d miss the connecting bus. On more than a few occasions, I’d come up out of the subway in time to see the bus pulling away, and it wasn’t going to stop if it saw someone running and waving. There would be an eleven minute wait for the next bus. I learned to leave with plenty of time, just in case.
If I did have a seat on the bus, things weren’t so bad. I’d read the paper, I’d watch buildings go up day-by-day, I learned to snooze in such a way that I didn’t miss my stop, and I sure learned where things were along the bus route. But if I had to stand, then it was very unpleasant. I might get a seat if one was vacated near me, but that might not happen; and standing on a lurching, swaying, stopping, and accelerating vehicle for 45 or more minutes was physically tiring.
Even so, I have no problem taking public transit. I think there are a number of ways to improve things that might make it a more attractive option for people who would otherwise drive, though.
Long commute for me would be defined as 30+ minutes driving time.
That’s about the farthest I’ve ever lived from work and prefer to stay away from jobs and farther than that.
The longest I’ve done is about 2.5 hours each way, by train(s) when I was going to technical college. Five days a week, for a year. Wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but it was doable. I’ve done an hour and a bit each way by car, and that was the pits. I’d opine that after two days in peak hour traffic, you become as crazy as everyone else driving at that time. I did a lot of it off peak, or I wouldn’t have lasted four years of it.
Over my career I’ve moved progressively to shorter and shorter commutes. I’m a two minute walk to work now. So there. 
This is a bit different, because although my train ride is only twelve minutes, my total journey time is slightly over an hour (I leave the house at 7.20, husband drops me off at the station for the 7.38 intercity, out I pop twelve minutes later and walk the two miles to the office, which takes about thirty minutes). It’s very 2009.
Apart from the slightly early rise (I could always get more sleep); I really do love it. I like that a four mile walk slots neatly into my day, I like that I have a bit of time to read on the train, I find that the walk back to the station switches off my brain and when I get home I can barely remember where I work. I don’t drive, but I think I’ll still do it this way when I learn.
(I did have a bit of jealousy directed at the colleague who could bike back to his house in eight minutes, but on the whole I think my system works well).
In my callow youth I’ve had hellish commutes, though – bus then train then additional bus to Manchester’s groin, for £4.50 an hour and all the sexual innuendo you can laugh off. It’s all in the details, I guess – nice seat on an intercity vs face in someone’s armpit on a branch line, relaxing city walk vs waiting in the drizzle for the number 82 again. That sort of thing.
In the U.K., a normal commute is defined as being up to 90 minutes. That being the radius for the DWP.
For people with a commute of 1.5 hours or more - can you not find a place to live closer (that you can afford?)
I just can’t see adding 3 or more hours to an 8 hour day. I drive about 25 minutes to work.
It was hell. I resigned within the first four weeks, and the commute was a big factor in that. I spent the entire time travelling worrying about whether there would be any hold-ups that would make me late, and then when I got home in the evening, half the night was over and I was too stressed out to enjoy what was left.
My commute is usually just under an hour - 15 minutes walk to the train station, 20 on the train, short transfer to light rail, another 15 minutes on the light rail, and my office is just across the street from the station.
I love podcasts.
Longest was for a short term (3 months) project - 1 1/2 hours each way, but it was through rural southern Wisconsin to Zion, IL.
Currently only 23 miles, but it’s 23 miles of Houston traffic. Good day - 45 minutes, bad day - 2 hours