I agree, it may not work everywhere, and this is why I mentioned the precondition of having an average public transportation network and some form of car sharing. You are forgetting that time spent driving is essentially dead time, while you can do all sort of things in a train, and with a bike you get exercise for free. So you cannot compare the travel times directly. For example, my work place is roughly the same distance from our apartment as yours. As I have mentioned, it saves me roughly 10 minutes driving there by bike, and I do not have to go to the gym, because I ride the bike for 20 miles daily.
I'll give you a few other examples:
* If I want to go see a movie in town, I can take the tram (20 minutes, runs every 5 minutes) or the bike (10 minutes), or car sharing (5 minutes walk to nearest station, 10 minute drive, 10 minutes searching for a parking spot in a garage, 10 minutes walking from said garage to the cinema.)
* If I want to visit my parents, it is a 2.5h car drive or a 3.5h tram/train/bus ride with 3 changes. Time lost in car: 2.5 hours. Time lost with PT: at most 30 minutes waiting at stations, the 3 hours in the train can be used for reading or working.
* If we want to visit the parents of my wife, it is a 50 minute car drive or a 80 minutes tram/train/bus ride. Time lost on car: 50 minutes, time lost with PT: roughly 10 minutes.
* If I want to visit someone in a remote village, or take a leisure trip to some remote place, or go hikin, I walk 5 minutes to the nearest car sharing station and take a car from there.
You can certainly listen to audiobooks, music or podcasts in a car. You can also have a private conversation with the passenger. Driving is by no means "lost time" for many people.
Eh. Driving time isn't completely lost, but it is pretty low capacity if you want to study or be entertained. I used my metro commute for 3 years to learn programming languages, take college courses, read stacks of books, nap, learn to cook with cooking shows, and solve technical problems for work. I used my car commute for 3 years to...listen to some light entertainment and music. I managed to get a speeding ticket while listening to a podcast because I wasn't focused enough on driving.
For me, it comes down to this: if I really want to enjoy a piece of music (i.e. close my eyes), or if I really want to commit to a conversation with another passenger, I can do that on a train. In a car, I and/or others will be dead.
The same goes for audiobooks: it may be possible to listen to shallow fiction in a car, but anything that requires true attention and concentration is very hard to follow while driving without putting yourself in danger, at least in an urban environment or at high speeds.
> You can also have a private conversation with the passenger
Depending on how you value your conversation and your lives.
Distracted driving isn't only caused by conversations on cell phones and there are studies behind why many states have limits on passengers riding with young drivers.
If you're the passenger, you should hope that the conversation is vapid enough to not distract.
>You are forgetting that time spent driving is essentially dead time,
Not to me it isn't. I listen to podcasts and/or music and/or YouTube videos I don't need to watch and have saved to my watch later list for listening to. And I'm alone in my car and will occasionally just sit in quiet enjoying alone time where I don't have multiple people blabbing in the background.
Some of the best laughs I've had are from driving and reading bumper stickers and vanity plates.
I don't want to be working on something 24/7/365 like people on HN seem to want to do. There's no exercise I'm going to do on a bus or a train as I don't walk around with hundreds of pounds of bumper plates, a barbell and a squat rack/rig or chalk (I'm a strength athlete so light calisthenics aren't even warming up for me).
As far as biking, yeah good luck riding a bicycle in central Indiana in the summer, you will show up to your destination completely soaked. I don't remember if I said it in this comment chain or another but the temperature today will be in the mid 80F's (29-30C) with 87% humidity. Go stand still outside for 90 seconds in that and you'll be sweating, do physical exertion and you'll be soaked. Want to bike somewhere in the winter? Past few winters the actual temperature has gotten down to -17F/-27C with copious amounts of snow and ice. Compare that to Hamburg which has an average low -0.5C in January vs -7.7C and seems to see an average high of only 22.7C in July vs 29.4F in Indy.
> Some of the best laughs I've had are from driving and reading bumper stickers and vanity plates.
That... seems very specific.
> the temperature today will be in the mid 80F's (29-30C) with 87% humidity
Ice and snow is one thing, but that doesn't sound too unreasonable for casual cycling. You might not want to do it for a job interview but it ought to be viable for many journeys.
Dealing with personal sweating seems like it should be an easier job than dealing with global heating.
> And I'm alone in my car and will occasionally just sit in quiet enjoying alone time
I'm sure that's true, but moving a few tons of environmentally-controlled metal a few kms twice a day seems like a wasteful way to achieve this.
I'll give you a few other examples:
* If I want to go see a movie in town, I can take the tram (20 minutes, runs every 5 minutes) or the bike (10 minutes), or car sharing (5 minutes walk to nearest station, 10 minute drive, 10 minutes searching for a parking spot in a garage, 10 minutes walking from said garage to the cinema.)
* If I want to visit my parents, it is a 2.5h car drive or a 3.5h tram/train/bus ride with 3 changes. Time lost in car: 2.5 hours. Time lost with PT: at most 30 minutes waiting at stations, the 3 hours in the train can be used for reading or working.
* If we want to visit the parents of my wife, it is a 50 minute car drive or a 80 minutes tram/train/bus ride. Time lost on car: 50 minutes, time lost with PT: roughly 10 minutes.
* If I want to visit someone in a remote village, or take a leisure trip to some remote place, or go hikin, I walk 5 minutes to the nearest car sharing station and take a car from there.