When the U.S.Census Bureau crunched the numbers in 2013, it found that about 115,000 commuters traveled 90 or more minutes to their jobs in the San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose metropolitan areas. Those long-distance commuters are the heavy hitters -- at the time, 3.9 percent of the total work force of more than 2.9 million -- in a region where almost everyone understands the nightmare of the roads.

Given that thousands of new jobs have been added in the two years since and that housing prices have continued to climb -- passing $1 million for a typical single family home in parts of the region -- the pressure on homebuyers continues. It's a good bet that even more middle class folks now find themselves driving out into exurbia on their way home from the office.
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"It's kind of like what you have to do if you want to own your own home," said Guillermo Alvarez, a clinical supervisor who had rented in pricey Pleasant Hill before pulling the plug to buy a place in the less pricey and more distant Pittsburg-Antioch area. The cost: $316,000.

Turner, a database administrator who earns around six figures, found herself even further out, in Brentwood, whose population has more than doubled since 2000 as more people pushed into far eastern Contra Costa County. There she found a 3-bedroom, 1,600-square-foot home for $250,000 -- 52 gridlocked miles away from her job in Milpitas, where she figures a similar house would easily have cost twice that.