UK Public Transport

My car is off the road at the moment so I've been looking into public transport alternatives. For reference, driving to work is 10 miles, takes 25 minutes and costs about £2 in fuel each way. I pay around £1.20 for parking at work.

To go by bus, it would be 3 buses, take 2 hours and cost £4 each way (there are a few different options but they all work out the same). The train could replace one of these bus journeys and reduce the time to just over 1 hour but would cost £10 for a day return.

Both of these are only available once an hour so depending on what time I need to be at work, I might need to leave up to an hour earlier for my commute and it would still cost me twice as much as driving.

I'd be willing to pay a little more because I could work/read on public transport, plus getting rid of the car would save maintenance, tax and insurance costs, but double for the bus (or triple for the train) is excessive.

However, the major issue for me is the time - I already spend the best part of 1 hour commuting and this going up to 5 hours is not workable.

Alternatively, I could move close to my workplace, however house prices in the city are at least double what they are here and rent would be 40% of my salary after tax.

The issue stems from everything public transport being in a star network, I have to get a bus to the nearest town, bus/train to the city of my workplace and then bus to the workplace. Even though I live in the next town over on the side closest to my work. My workplace is also on this side of the city.