> On a normal day, I tavel 40km to work [...] totalling approx. 1:15. I'd estimate that the combined reliability of the trains and my bike have been 95% or better over the last six months**. I won't even begin to contemplate the horrors of parking a car anywhere near the office, but I'd say that the drive itself could be done in perhaps 45 minutes on a good day. Since I'm of the lucky sub-spicies of homo sapiens who are able to sleep on the train an still wake up 30 seconds before I have to get off, this comparison makes the car a loser. For me. But I see many people who are in the same situation as me, who choose the other alternative, and I think that this borders on the irresponsible.
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I find this *fascinating* for two reasons. One, if you live in a large enough city with adequate public transportation, then it doesn't seem to matter if you live either in Stockholm, in New York City, or in Vancouver or Montreal: the average expected commuter time (by train, express bus, and subway) for travelling ~40 km around the city seems to be around 1:15 -- i.e. 1 hour 15 minutes. (I wonder if it's the same in Washington, DC, or in Toronto, Ontario or other cities?)

Secondly, that thing about the "waking up 30 seconds before your stop" freaks me out. In Montreal, the commuter trains and the Métro (our subway) trains always do a medium-hard kind of "braking lurch" right before the final end-of-line terminus, in order to wake up anyone who's dozed off on the train. The buses, of course, don't do this kind of thing because they brake irregularly to pick up would-be passengers running to catch the bus, or to let off people who request getting off at an irregular stop, etc. I never had a problem with this, however... I dozed off all the time on the commuter bus going to school or going home. Like julian, I always woke up about one minute before my stop(s). It was an easy way to get an extra 80 minutes of sleep every day and I missed my stop only once in 3 1/2 years. Okay, so what really bugs me about this is that somehow I must have always 'known' where the bus was at all times, even with my eyes closed. However, studies of humans deprived of visual input shows that we're an extremely visual species -- we rely on our eyes so much, we become easily disoriented without them. Then it follows that perhaps I was never really asleep -- but it sure FELT like my brain was parked in gear inside la-la land?

Wolf "never had any idea where the bus was located when I tried to guess its position while awake, but with my eyes closed" spirit