The Commute Dilemma

We just bought a house. Hooray! The thing is, the house is pretty much a dream home. It’s got a creek running through the back yard and is installed right inside truly wonderful country mountain forrest. What’s more, it cost us just about half our house buying budget. How on earth is this possible? Well, the reason for this is because despite the vast size of Australia, the average Australian finds the idea of an hour commute to work completely unteneable. I’ve had longer commutes than that just to cross from one side of London to the other…

So surely we must be missing out on some ameneties? Well, not that I can see. The high street of Belgrave has all your usual sort of shops, cafes and restaurants and it’s an extremely short walk. So what about broadband? We’re 700 meters from the exchange, ADSL2+ enabled and loaded with a fair bit of third party telco equipment meaning the choice of ISP is pretty wide and I’d expect the same connection or better than our inner Melbourne abode. And what of the commute? It’s a short walk to Belgrave train station and the train runs right into the city with no changes. Basically the same station I get off now. Instead of 30 minutes on a train it’s a bit over an hour. Now granted for this distance the train really should be more of a long distance train, with tables and such, and in fact it’s just a usual metro train so not as comfortable as it could be. Yet at afternoon peak hour last week I checked out the train from Flinders to Belgrave and it must have been a quarter full, if that.

That goes to what I’m saying, despite the fact this is prime commute, work in the city on a city wage, live in the country on a block of land in the middle of a forrest and pay half as much as a bloody 2 bedroom apartment (I’m not kidding), people just wont do it. I thought about it and maybe it’s the suburban kids thing? The kids can’t play on the road with the neighbours, it’s kinda windy busy roads with no footpaths. Maybe it’s schools, I expect they’re a drive rather than a school walk. In truth, I don’t really know.

All I know is their loss is my gain. Personally I absolutely revel in an hour train commute. It’s a prime time to switch off from the Internet and read a book, write a book even, or study Chinese. I’ve made spectacular progress in Chinese by just doing an hour a day of flashcards on the train. Imagine when I have more than two hours a day… it’ll be bliss.

So the city dwellers can keep their scrappy looking graffiti covered town houses. You might have more restaurants in spitting distance but the food at the locals in the leafy suburbs is cheaper and better, because they want you back. In fact, this is all the same sort of arguments I recall about moving out of London to the country in the UK a few years back. Only thing is back then London wasn’t commutable at all and we had to find a way to do it. All the commuter towns on the fast rail lines were virtually as expensive as London. The situation in Victoria is very different. I don’t actually understand the profile of someone who wants to spend $850,000 on a three bedroom townhouse.

It occurs to me that this whole phenomenon is actually a reason why there’s no proper rail network, virtually no expansion of the rail network even during the massive boom years continuing in Australia’s fastest growing city. Folks just don’t want to do it. It’s in tram range or it’s not worth doing. Funny old place.