I've had Twin Cities commutes of 45 minutes and 35 minutes (all highway) and for me, it wasn't worth it...I grew up in a smaller SD town and much prefer to live closer to my daily activities. I was driving into the city from Waconia. I spent a lot of time in the city for work and various activities across the metro, which meant a TON of time on the road. This naturally means a lot of money spent on gas and wear and tear on your car. Gas isn't so much of an issue right now but I was doing that during the $4/gallon times...woof. Traffic on the first snow of the year and then the heavier snowfalls is completely mental.
I've stuggled with mental health issues for a number of years now and being in traffic that long and that much is very stressful and definitely doesn't help relieve those issues. I realized too that was a lot of wasted life hours on the road each week that i would rather spend elsewhere to improve my quality of life. So naturally this was a big influence to move closer.
Another big thing was that the southwest metro is growing south and westward like crazy and people are pushing to drive longer and longer distances. Not that it's a bad thing if they are cool with it...but this was putting a lot of strain on the network of roads I was driving and drivers were getting VERY aggressive and VERY VERY risky. I am talking, i witnessed a single car attempt to make 3 separate passing attempts of 2-4 cars per attempt, on a two lane road, in some of the most obvious, worst possible "no passing" places, in about a 5 mile span. two of the three times the car was playing chicken with on-coming traffic, running one car off the road and almost colliding head on with a garbage truck. This was the worst I saw but there is no doubt that overall traffic had gotten significantly worse in a short time and seeing that was the nail in the coffin for me.
I still spend a great deal of time in traffic driving around the metro for activities but on a far less regular basis and typically non-rush hour type traffic too. It helps that i was able to move closer to work and then shortly after, work moved me to a "work from home" status too.
For you though, you would be going the opposite direction of nearly all commuters and doing it from a Rochester to a smaller sized city makes it a lot easier relatively speaking. 30 minutes isn't much for Twin Cities standards but might start to be on the long side for those smaller areas. Being closer to more activities the bigger city can provide is always a plus but like The Dude, I prefer to be closer to the places I have to go to daily. I like the suggestion someone above said of renting a place in the bigger city and trying it out. After a year you can re-evaluate and re-locate if necessary.
