10-second walk down my hallway to my computer.

Morning: walk 5 km uphill in the snow. Evening: walk 5 km further uphill in the snow to my second house. Next morning: walk 5 km even further uphill to my next place of work

…and so on until the weekend where I walk 50km back down the mountain to my first house, in the snow.

4 years back it was a walk to the station and a half hour train ride.

Now I walk downstairs after waking up at 9:30.

I live in a medium sized city (~95k) in Europe. It takes me around 15 minutes by bike to get to work.

A 30 minute walk across the city center

I live in a small town near Amsterdam and work twice a week in the office in Amsterdam.

My commute is:

• 3 minutes walk to train station
• 24 minutes train ride
• 12 minutes bike ride

Pre-pandemic I drove 15 minutes to the BART station, hopefully got parking. Walked 5 minutes to the train platform. Waited for train. 50ish minute train ride to downtown San Francisco. 10 minute walk to office. Pretty typical Bay Area commute.

Now, I take my dogs for a walk, get back home, make coffee, relax. Go upstairs and login to work. WFH is the new normal and it’s great.

It’s 16 steps down to my basement office.

I work from home and yes, it’s as great as you think. I’m 11 years till retirement and I will NEVER work in an office ever again.

TL:DR - Ride my bike along a precarious but not terrible inner city suburb of Melbourne Australia. It takes about 10-15 minutes to go 4km. I have the option of a 25 minute riverside bike ride if I’m willing to give up my sleep in.

I live in an “inner suburb” of Melbourne Australia, and I work at a community centre just a few tiny city suburbs away, 4km.

I have an e-bike that I use as my primary vehicle, because of the way my migraine disorder manifests and overlaps with another condition, I can’t drive a car. So I’ve learned how to get by completely carless - living in the inner city suburbs helps so I’m privileged in that regard. But the ebike has been a game changer.

Before covid I had a job about 6km away and I was wasting so much money on buses and uber, it was two buses and an awkward connecting power-walk that meant frequent missed connections and also pushed me just over onto the more expensive ticket because of how our public transport fee system works. So I would lazily uber to work several times a week. And since I was working part time, it wasn’t even worth it some days when I had a 2 hour shift. ~40% of my pay cheque would go to ubering to work.

Then covid hit and our state went into lock down. The community centre ran a food bank so my 2 or 3 hour part time shifts became 12 hour days as demand increased but staffing couldn’t. I’d always miss the last bus, and uber drivers were few and far between. I tried riding my bike but the 12km return trip was just a bit too far on top of the 12 hour day, so I bought an ebike.

I got a new job, closer, and a very nice ride. I have multiple route options, one of which is a gorgeous separated shared pedestrian-cycle path that follows the local river which I often ride home - I finish at the optimum dog walking time so I get to meet so many puppies on my leisurely ride home. But it’s very slow (because of all the dogs which aren’t supposed to be off leash, but are) so, my preferred route to work is the fast way. It cuts right through the the town centre, it’s an old industrial dock town so it’s pretty highly developed but never highly invested in, meaning the roads are horrible and full of trucks. But the council are working on it, and in the last few years they’ve installed some halfway decent bike infrastructure. The danger is worth the 15 minutes it saves me in the morning.

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I drive 30 minutes into work, but it’s against traffic both ways, so it’s a smooth ride.

My commute should be:

• 10 min walk to bus stop
• 20 min bus ride
• 10 min walk

however it usually is:

• 10 min walk to bus stop
• 20 min waiting for bus because the one that was supposed to come through didn’t
• 30 min bus ride
• 10 min walk

Which is why I work a lot less hours when I go to the office, I start my clock the moment I would sit to work around 9:00, then start packing, go through the whole process, get to the office at around 10:30 or sometimes later, plug in my laptop, grab a coffee, chat with colleagues, read some emails and by this time it’s already lunch time. Come back from lunch, do some work, then meetings, then I need to start packing for the journey back if I’m to make it back home by 17:00.

In short I give 9-5 to the company, if they want me to waste 3 of those hours in commute, plugging/unplugging peripherals and essentially not being productive the entire day it’s their problem. I can do my job from home, as I did for a long time before WFH policy changed, if they think going to the office is worth the commute time then the commute time comes from their slice of the day. To me it’s not worth it, so I wouldn’t spend my personal time commuting to the office.

Before switching to full time WFH I had a 20 mile (32km) drive. At rush hour it took a minimum of 60 minutes if there were no “incidents”. Incidents were a regular occurrence and would easily cause the commute to balloon to 90-120 minutes.

I would from time to time check in to see what the public transportation options were. Public transportation looked something like:

15-20min walk to the bus stop. 40 minute bus ride to the light rail terminus. 20 minute train ride 10 minute shuttle ride from the light rail station to the office.

So about 90 minutes of travel on a perfect day with no wait between transportation modes.

I opted to “beat the rush” by leaving at 5:30am. That way it was an under 30 minute drive.

In the US and currently fully WFH, but if I need to go into the office for some reason, it’s a 10-15 minute walk.

Walkability is pretty important to me, so I moved to a city with decent public transportation and don’t currently own a car. I use ride sharing apps or traditional car rentals on the rare occasion that I need a car, and even though they feel expensive, my annual car expenses are still significantly less than what I’d pay for parking alone if I owned a car.

10-15 minute bike ride. On the way I in traffic can almost be entirely evaded by swapping the section without bike lane for a bit of trail. The return is a bit more janky because the infrastructure designer probably died from aneurysm as they were designing the road layout.