As part of a new series this month, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer is taking a look at how New Yorkers commute. Lehrer along with Robert Buzz Paaswell, Director of the University Transportation Research Center at City College, will help listeners redesign their commutes. The series kicked off yesterday with a question: “Does your commute shape the city, or does the city shape your commute? What one thing have you done or would you do to redesign your commute?”
The comments on WNYC’s site are quite fascinating as New Yorkers have a wide array of commutes and views on their commutes. I’ll look closer at what people are saying and offer my take over the next few days. In the meantime, feel free to chime in. How would you improve or redesign your daily commute in this city of interborough and intraborough commuters?
12 comments
My commute is pretty close to ideal, given the lifestyle choices I’ve made. I live about 5 minutes’ walk from the 190th Street station on the A, and my job is about 5 minutes’ walk from the Canal Street station on the same line. At the times that I commute, A trains are fairly frequent, and significant delays in transit are not common. Given my choice to live at opposite ends of Manhattan, I can’t complain, as the A is a pretty fast express. It will get faster when they install CBTC, but I doubt that’ll happen in my lifetime.
I live in Harlem and work in Brooklyn near Coney Island. I have multiple options for getting to work – walk a couple of blocks and take the 1 to the Q, then walk across the street to work; or I can take the M100 or M101 to St. Nicholas and 125th Street and take the B straight to work.
I prefer the B, because I can always hop on an A or D express to 59th Street and save 3-5 minutes on my commute.
Door to door it takes about 1.5 hours, but I have books and movies on my iPod for the days when I do not sleep on the way to or from work.
I count myself among the fortunate. I chose where I live (LIC) based on ease of visiting family and one-seat ride to school to West 4th and a cheaper rent than I had previously. I now work by Grand Central so commuting is ideal.
This also means I partake in after-work and weekend activities readily. If I had a longer commute, my life would be more restricted socially and I would not be happy. I tolerate at most 35-40 each way for a commute. I gladly trade off huge living space (I mean, who really needs all that space?) for mobility. Of course, this is what works for me. Can’t have it all but I have what I prioritize most.
I still participate in social activities since most places my friends like to hang out are within 45 minutes of my job and home.
I live in Astoria and work right next door to Grand Central, so I simply take the N/W to Queensboro Plaza for an across-the-platform transfer to a 7 train to Grand Central. Door-to-door I can make it in 40 minutes, usually. I can’t really see any way to make it better.
Now, getting to Brooklyn from Astoria, on the other hand… oh, if only the G regularly ran to Queens Plaza.
I think I can complain. My main option is the 4 and 5! On good days, my commute door to door can be thirty minutes (but only if I arrive at work really early or really late, if I go at the “right” time it takes much longer”). However, the 4 and 5 is subject to delays, though less so recently.
Of course the crowding is horrible, to the point where its difficult for me to dive into work right away, also forget about doing anything for about an hour after I get home.
I can cross midtown and transfer to the 2 and 3 and have even done this, but after the incident with the uptown “1” station I’ve noticed increased delays on the 2 and 3. Still, I try to use the West Side trains then cut crosstown when time is not an issue.
I could use a for real we really mean it express bus, there probably should be another subway line on the East Side long term.
I have two options. The long, slow R from Bay Ridge to Wall Street, or the super-expensive express bus. I tried the express bus but it was too crowded and I hated standing all the way so I stick to the slow R. Plus I get to read and snooze more.
My ideas for improving my commute would include wishful thinking like getting rid of the W and the rush-hour M which greatly reduce the frequency of the R train. Every 10 to 12 minutes at 9AM is ridonkulous.
The public timetable shows headways of 10 minutes or better leaving 95th Street from 5:50 AM to 8:47 PM, with two exceptions leading into the PM rush due to two northbound trains that enter service at 36th Street. Now, it’s possible that there’s an error in the timetable, and of course real-life trains never run precisely on schedule, but, generally speaking, you shouldn’t be seeing a sustained 12-minute headway.
Yes, it’s always nice to have more service. But does the line need more service? From what I’ve seen of the R (at the Brooklyn end), it’s one of the emptiest lines in the system. The rated rush hour capacity of a 75-foot B Division car is 175 (or 145 for a 60-foot car); on average, the R isn’t even close. Sure, if there’s a delay in service, you’ll encounter a crowded train – and there’s probably a train right behind it, that you don’t see, that’s virtually empty. That can happen on any line anywhere in the system (except that on the more crowded lines, following a delay it actually takes several back-to-back full trains to clear everybody off the platforms).
Your ideas are great if the only question is how to serve people in Bay Ridge. Alas, there are other people in the city who also need service. You’ve just reduced West End service, eliminated what’s left of service between Nassau Street and Montague Street, and generated severe (worse-than-Lex) crowding in Astoria, whose service, already impressively crowded, you’ve cut in half.
Oh, I should also add that I don’t think that a one-seat ~35-minute ride is a particularly long commute. Lots of people have longer commutes that involve transfers – and have to stand for the whole thing!
(Granted, I don’t know how long your walk is to and from the subway – that could potentially add on quite a bit. And I’m not including wait time, which, as you’ve pointed out, is significant.)
Oh, I was just shooting my mouth off. It happens. I’m reaching an age where standing for long periods of time is not fun. You’re undoubtedly right that many people are worse off than me.
I did live in Astoria for seven years, five of them with no W train and while crowded, there was probably more N service than now.
From what I can tell, ridership in Astoria has grown tremendously in recent years. The N alone won’t cut it anymore.
[…] days ago, I linked to a WNYC series about improving our commutes and asked SAS readers to opine about their daily trips to and from home. Yesterday, WNYC dropped […]