A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her To Work by 7 AM (nytimes.com)

From a report on The New York Times: Sheila James starts her Monday, and the workweek, at 2:15 a.m. This might be normal for a baker or a morning radio host, but Ms. James is a standard American office worker. She is 62 and makes $81,000 a year as a public health adviser for the United States Department of Health and Human Services in San Francisco. Her early start comes because San Francisco is one of the country's most expensive metropolitan areas. Ms. James lives about 80 miles away in Stockton, which has cheaper homes but requires her to commute on two trains and a bus, leaving at 4 a.m. Plenty of office workers get up at 5 a.m. or a bit before, but 2:15 is highly unusual. "Two-fifteen is early enough that some people are still having their evening," she said on a (very) early morning. But she likes to take her time and have coffee. She keeps the lights low and the house quiet and Zen-like. "I just can't rush like that," she said. When the second alarm goes off at 3:45 -- a reminder to leave for the train in 15 minutes -- her morning shifts from leisure to precision. It is a seven-minute drive to the station, where she catches the Altamont Corridor Express train.

Comments

I don't get it.

[jellomizer]

So she chose this life style. If waking up at 2:30 isn't her thing, she could Drive and avoid public transportation and leave at a more reasonable hour.

She doesn't have to use public transportation she can drive further (she already seems to have a car because she drives to the train station)
She doesn't need to live so far away she can choose a smaller home, or choose to get some roommates to split the cost.
She can probably find a job closer to her home.

Sure cost of living in such areas have skyrocketed to a point where non-rich people cant live in the area. Thanks to gentrification and policies that try to get rid of poor people from living in the area all under protecting your property investment. But if needed they are other options.