If you can't understand why anyone would do this, here is the logic:
* Most of the best & middling jobs in the region are in Manhattan
* You can live in Manhattan but you can imagine its super expensive. Good for singles, yuppies and wealthy families.
* The NYC suburbs/NJ across the river are a 30-60 commute, they are expensive too and largely apartments and small town houses. Public schools are often sub-optimal, traffic is bad, sometimes crime.
* City Fringe - LI/Westchester/Northern NJ - 60-90 min commute (when trains/buses are running): big houses, lots beautiful suburbs, good schools, backyard, maybe close to beach. The American dream. Some places are affordable but still expensive.
* Extreme Commutes - Much cheaper, wide variety of cities and towns, some great schools. Affordable for normal people. 2hr + commute for one of the parents
Other points
* in the 80s with high crime lots of firms moved out to the suburbs. This is now no longer in fashion as newer generations are happier to live in apartments and office parks are empty.
* The geography of NY is tough with the Hudson River & harbor making access difficult, and suburbs more remote than say LA or London.
* Other towns in the North East are struggling. Upstate NY, Connecticut, Southern NJ all suffer from shuttering firms, low employment and low wages so people will commute to get to NYC from those areas.
* Trains and Buses are super slow, the final few miles into Manhattan are often stop/start. updated infrastructure will help a lot. Would also increase urban sprawl though.
I chose to raise my kids in an apartment and avoid the commute. But I know they're missing out on a lot, maybe I'm selfish and the extreme commuters are the sensible ones.
Some of this is responding to you but I think it got a little away from what I originally was going to say :)
I agree Manhattan real estate can be crazy expensive but there are plenty more affordable apartments in Harlem, Brooklyn, Long Island and Queens. They are still expensive compared to the national average but I live in one of those areas and pay a third of what many of my friends do that live in UW/LW/UE/LE sides.
From this article it seems the most important things to them are the space and schools they are able to get from moving outside of manhattan. Which is nice but certainly a personal preference. I value things to do over my commute so I actually live in NYC and do an hour to work outside of the city.
Either way, what do you think they're missing out living in some place like Bethlehem? Most people move there because there is nothing there, and as someone who has spent some time, there really is nothing to do there. Most cities have parks, rec leagues etc. for kids to enjoy. Not having a yard won't deprive you kid of most activities besides not having to walk a few blocks to find somewhere to play.
To add to that, having easy access to all the cultural events that a place like NYC provides is great for kids. All of my friends that are native New Yorkers got exposed to a whole lot more at a much earlier age than those that didn't grow up here. For a curious kid there is a whole lot more to explore in a city like New York than in a suburban backyard where things are only accessible by car.
I think you're missing one of the biggest reasons people end up super-commuting: family.
If you are from the NY metropolitan area, "choosing to live 2 hours from your job" is sometimes synonymous with "choosing to live 5 minutes from your parents, grandparents, siblings". If you choose to live closer to your job, your children may get to see you for a few more hours during the week, but they'll only see their grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins two or three times a year, at the holidays.
(This isn't actually the situation I'm in, but my anecdotal experience is that 1/2 to 2/3 of the other super-commuters I know are making that trade-off.)
Growing up 2 hours from your extended family is radically different from growing up in the middle of your extended family.
I grew up ~5 minutes from my grandparents, great-grandparents, and two aunts & uncles. During the summers, my grandmother would watch us when we were smaller, and sometimes my great-grandmother or aunts or uncles. We'd go over for lunch or dinner on Sundays, stop by someone's house on the way to run an errand, tag along to quilting circles and church events.
There's a casual contact you get living so close to so much family that you lose when you need to coordinate schedules and "make it worth" a 4 hour trip each way. It becomes a burden for you to bundle up the family and drive them out once or twice on the weekends, and an imposition for your family to entertain you each weekend, not to mention the loss of week-day contact.
There isn't two options, live down the street and see extended family everyday or live two hours away and see extended family only on Christmas and Thanksgiving on odd number years. There's a ton of in-between and it's totally disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Yes, you don't get daily contact with extended family when you live two hours away (and usually not if you even live 2 minutes away) but we are talking about a case where it's at the expenses of not getting daily contact with a parent plus the marital strain that it probably causes. It's not like one is objectively worse than the other.
If your family is so nasty they basically write you off because you moved two hours away then they aren't really the kind of people you want to be close with anyways. You're basically laying out a scenario where your family only cares about you if you happen to be physically present.
Plus the people who think nothing of commuting four hours a day five days a week are not suddenly going to be extremely burdened by commuting four hours once a week.
Over a decade ago I moved 2.5 hours away from my home town but I have maintained very close relationships to the people that are there I wish to remain close with and we visit very regularly without anyone feeling burdened or imposing. It works very well if all the participants involved want it to work.
I'm not saying you can't maintain a close relationship with a little distance.
But first and foremost, there's a big difference between you yourself traveling 2 hours each way (to work) and you, your spouse, and 2.5 children traveling 2 hours each way. Getting kids ready & keeping them entertained for a 10 minute drive is bad enough.
And it's insane to say four hours of travel time isn't limiting. You maintain a close relationship, sure, see them often, sure. But do you stop by just for lunch or dinner? Do you see them during the week, or just on weekends? Do you go to the same church, are your kids in the same softball league? If the kids are sick and need someone to watch them during the day, do you drop them off with grandpa or do you take a day off work?
The point of having a 2 hour commute is so that you can live where you want to spend most of your time. If you want to spend most of your time 15 minutes from your office, great. If you have somewhere else you'd rather spend most of your time, it makes sense to live there, so that by default, there you are.
I see the logic if you have to live in, say, the New York City region... But the fact is, you don't.
I live in a suburb of a moderate-sized southern city and work as a data scientist at a technology company just outside of downtown. The pay is good, the commute is 15 minutes one-way (pretty much 100% of the time, too), the cost of living is phenomenal, and I'm within walking distance of all the shopping, eating, mountain biking, hiking, and boating I could want to do in an average week.
I have no idea why folks seem to think NYC and the Bay Area are the only places you can possibly live...
My problem was that, being in Dallas and having worked for companies that are not household names, companies like yours ignored me whenever I applied. The ones who didn't we're clustered in NYC and Seattle (with a few exceptions).
In addition some lifestyles are just easier to attain in these scenarios, such as making a enough to be the sole earner in the family and allowing your partner to stay at home and raise children (which keeps even more money in the bank).
I can imagine being in this position and opting to extreme commute.
* Most of the best & middling jobs in the region are in Manhattan
* You can live in Manhattan but you can imagine its super expensive. Good for singles, yuppies and wealthy families.
* The NYC suburbs/NJ across the river are a 30-60 commute, they are expensive too and largely apartments and small town houses. Public schools are often sub-optimal, traffic is bad, sometimes crime.
* City Fringe - LI/Westchester/Northern NJ - 60-90 min commute (when trains/buses are running): big houses, lots beautiful suburbs, good schools, backyard, maybe close to beach. The American dream. Some places are affordable but still expensive.
* Extreme Commutes - Much cheaper, wide variety of cities and towns, some great schools. Affordable for normal people. 2hr + commute for one of the parents
Other points
* in the 80s with high crime lots of firms moved out to the suburbs. This is now no longer in fashion as newer generations are happier to live in apartments and office parks are empty.
* The geography of NY is tough with the Hudson River & harbor making access difficult, and suburbs more remote than say LA or London.
* Other towns in the North East are struggling. Upstate NY, Connecticut, Southern NJ all suffer from shuttering firms, low employment and low wages so people will commute to get to NYC from those areas.
* Trains and Buses are super slow, the final few miles into Manhattan are often stop/start. updated infrastructure will help a lot. Would also increase urban sprawl though.
I chose to raise my kids in an apartment and avoid the commute. But I know they're missing out on a lot, maybe I'm selfish and the extreme commuters are the sensible ones.