Extreme commuting has always fascinated me. I don't like to commute and so early in my life my wife and I worked very hard to get into a small 'starter house' in the middle of things. It was a good choice for me, given how much I don't like commuting. But a good friend of mine who worked at NetApp lived in Livermore which is 40 miles away in exchange for a bigger house and a larger lot, a lot of the reason that was 'ok' for them was the 'ace' commuter train(1). When I worked at Google there was a good friend of mine that lived in Marin county (about 75 miles away) and took the Google shuttle.
What all of these things have in common is that for most of the commute if you aren't driving and can do 'productive' work, the time isn't really "wasted".
And that kind of thing leads to all sorts of speculative questions;
Like what if a town outside of New York invested in their own train that would take residents to downtown Manhattan? If you compare the sales tax and property tax revenue of those people with the cost of operating a small passenger service to Manhattan how does it compare? How about a bus service like Google does for its employees?
At what point would it make sense to have a train that was the office? Given the price of real estate when does a company benefit from having a train that rolls in a loop amongst some number of cities and people get on and get off when the train returns to their city. Could you topologically arrange it so that a city was re-visited every 8 hours?
How will self driving cars change this? Clearly a commute isn't as big a deal if the car is driving you (its your own commuter bus to work, but with all your stuff and you are in control of who rides with you). Should we be buying up property in the Exurbs in anticipation of the huge demand? What about 'driverless car roads' that go from the exurbs to major cities?
I'll do you one better: combine super comfortable van dwelling type vans, autonomous vehicles, and extreme commuting. Can I fall asleep in my van in my driveway 2 hours away from Manhattan but program it to start driving me in about 90 minutes before I wake up? And then perhaps take a nap again on the way home.
What all of these things have in common is that for most of the commute if you aren't driving and can do 'productive' work, the time isn't really "wasted".
And that kind of thing leads to all sorts of speculative questions;
Like what if a town outside of New York invested in their own train that would take residents to downtown Manhattan? If you compare the sales tax and property tax revenue of those people with the cost of operating a small passenger service to Manhattan how does it compare? How about a bus service like Google does for its employees?
At what point would it make sense to have a train that was the office? Given the price of real estate when does a company benefit from having a train that rolls in a loop amongst some number of cities and people get on and get off when the train returns to their city. Could you topologically arrange it so that a city was re-visited every 8 hours?
How will self driving cars change this? Clearly a commute isn't as big a deal if the car is driving you (its your own commuter bus to work, but with all your stuff and you are in control of who rides with you). Should we be buying up property in the Exurbs in anticipation of the huge demand? What about 'driverless car roads' that go from the exurbs to major cities?
It is a lot of fun to speculate about.
[1] http://www.acerail.com/Home