You know, parts of Queens actually don’t look too much different than Philadelphia, and if you squint, Center City is reminiscent of Brooklyn:

Karen Giberson’s day starts at 5:30 a.m. She gets up, gets ready, and drives to 30th Street Station, where she catches the 6:52 a.m. train to Manhattan and her jobs as president of the Accessories Council, a nonprofit trade association, and an associate at Anomaly, an ad agency.

At 5:39 p.m., Giberson is on a return train for Philadelphia; by about 7:20 p.m., she’s back home in Glen Mills.

“It’s a very long day,” says Giberson, 42, who’s been making the trek for 2 1/2 years. “But I love what I do and it’s there, and I love where I live and that’s here. It’s a compromise.”

One that puts her in good company with scores of other long-distance commuters who choose to make their homes here while pursuing their careers in New York. Whether it’s because of lower real estate prices in this region or plum jobs that happen to be roughly 90 miles to the north, enough people are willing to make the trek that Amtrak estimates it pulled in $9.4 million from 220,800 rides on multi-trip tickets on the Philadelphia-New York route in 2007 — an all-time revenue high.

. . .

For most of these commuters, it is real estate that keeps them riding the rails, especially when the average purchase price for a Manhattan apartment is $1.4 million. That can make Amtrak’s monthly rail pass seem like a cheap alternative at $1,098, especially when people are willing to move deeper into the suburbs and travel farther to work so they can afford the houses they want.

“I love the New York area, but I also have kids,” said Giberson, who bought her house in 2001 for $310,000. “It wouldn’t really be an option to hike it up there and stick everybody in a little bitty apartment and move everyone from the schools and friends they love.”

According to the Census Bureau, 15.9 million commuters leave for work between midnight and 5:59 a.m., and 3 million commute more than 90 minutes a day. Is there that much of a difference between driving an hour from Medford to Philadelphia in rush-hour traffic and taking an hour-and-a-half train ride from Philadelphia to New York?

Instead of spending that time driving, a lot of long-distance workers opt for the train, a time-honored mode of transportation in the long history of the metropolis-to-metropolis commute. In this wired era, folks work as they go, via wireless Internet and cell phone.

“The commute in is actually one of the most pleasurable parts of my day,” says Giberson. “I sit in the cafe car, spread my stuff out, get on the computer, and I work from the time I sit down until we hit the tunnel.”

If you want to depend on Amtrak, godspeed . . . and hope there isn’t a freight train holding you up somewhere outside of Elizabeth.