
Where the New York City Subway Doesn't Go - qzervaas
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/08/where-the-new-york-city-subway-doesnt-go/400538/
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Spooky23
Ignoring the bus lines is pretty wacky. I grew up in Queens, and rode the bus
all of the time. My dad took the bus to the express train to manhattan for
several years.

The bus isn't sexy, but it works and is often less unpleasant than the subway.

Also, you need to remember how places like Queens developed. It was mostly
little downs until about 100 years ago. The house I grew up in was part of a
120 acre farm as late as 1897! It developed into a sort of inner suburb... And
as density increased, the cost of acquiring land and building infrastructure
hockey-sticked upward.

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pdabbadabba
It's worth bearing in mind that in areas of NYC where the bus is the only
option, a bus commute is often much much longer than a subway commute. I had
the displeasure of attempting a few bus commutes into Manhattan from my old
neighborhood in Bed-Stuy, and I would not be eager to do it again.

So, while I agree that one shouldn't completely ignore the buses, I think it
is also misleading to treat them as equivalent to subways.

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steveklabnik
From where I live in Brooklyn, if I want to get to downtown Brooklyn, I can
take a bus that goes straight down the relevant avenue to get there, _or_ I
can take the train into Manhattan and then down.

The train is five minutes faster.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That's not such a bad deal considering you get a free bus transfer back home
for quick trips.

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steveklabnik
Yeah, I would sometimes ride one, sometimes the other. I have an irrational
love for the subway, so I usually take it even if it's five or ten minutes
longer.

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bunderbunder
The radius of the circle the author used, 500m, is a bit under twice the
length of a Manhattan block.

I can guarantee you that your typical regular transit user is capable of
walking a couple blocks without having to stop for a Gatorade.

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lloyddobbler
I was thinking this, too.

I can't imagine anyone--even those from out of town--thinking that walking 3-4
blocks to a subway station in NYC is too far to handle.

Re: another comment, the Paris Metro _is_ dense enough to work in the city
proper - but only in the city proper. A side effect is that the service is
super-slow except on 1-2 lines. The slow speed makes it nearly impossible to
expand to the marginal/suburb areas, so you wind up with a similar situation
to New York's outer boroughs.

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koliber
The author is misleading about lack of subway access to JFK airport. I have
traveled many times to JFK by subway. He is technically correct that the
subway does not tunnel underneath JFK and does not go to terminals. However,
you take the A train and then hop onto the AirTrain provided by JFK to get to
the terminal.

~~~
bigredtech
You can also take the LIRR from Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn to JFK and it's
really easy and convenient.

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noer
500m is a little over a quarter of a mile and can be walked by an average
person in just over 6 minutes, if the author extended those radii by 250m to
750, it would be closer to half a mile, which a person can walk in about 10
minutes and, probably represents a more realistic view of how long someone
will walk to the subway. That said, I used to live a little over a half mile
from the Nassau Av G station. There was a bus that would take me there, but I
eventually figured out that unless I saw the bus was a block or two away from
my corner, it would just be quicker to walk to the station, rather than wait
for the bus.

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mosburger
The lack of subway access to LGA is what I, an occasional traveler to NYC,
find the most mind-boggling.

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steveklabnik
You can take the M to Jackson Hts - Roosevelt Av, and then there's a Q70
shuttle from there. It's not too bad.

I still prefer JFK.

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tzs
When considering a potential living arrangement, I pretty much ignore bus
access unless I am only planning to live there a relatively short time.

That's because its way to easy to fiddle with bus routes, and so I can't count
on a bus that works for me now to still work for me next year.

I'd expect that with a subway, where moving a route over a few blocks is
considerably more involved and more costly than changing some signs and
putting out new schedules, there would be more long term stability.

Is this the case in reality? How often do they shut down a route in the NY
subway system? How often do they keep an underperforming route but cut the
frequency of trains? Is there some lower limit for train frequency below which
they will not go for a route that is not being outright cancelled?

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michaelpinto
Something tech folks may find of interest is that eons before Uber there were
private van sharing services in Queens that operated near all of the final
subway stops like Jamaica. Also due to the lack of yellow cabs you'd tend to
use black car services to fill the taxi void.

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melling
It doesn't go to New Jersey either, but it should.

[http://m.nydailynews.com/opinion/extend-7-train-secaucus-
art...](http://m.nydailynews.com/opinion/extend-7-train-secaucus-
article-1.1504464)

~~~
codingdave
Did something happen to the PATH trains? I always used those when work took me
to NJ.

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ascagnel_
The PATH trains are still around, but they haven't expanded service in at
least a decade. PATH services the two Penn Stations (Newark and NY), but
doesn't run to Secaucus. In fact, I think Secaucus is still exclusively NJT
when it comes to rail.

There was some talk years ago about expanding AirTrain (at EWR) to Secaucus
and the Penn Stations (for one-seat rides from midtown Manhattan to the
airport), but that hasn't gone anywhere.

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harryjo
Why would you make "transit-accessible locatons" the exact same color as "the
ocean" ??

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reallifepixel
On a slight tangent, I would just like to note that the Stamen Design Toner
maps are beautiful.

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wjnc
Walk people, walk! Why only 500m, it's only a 6 minute walk! Not including
traffic, so might be some more. Increase that radius to a 10 minute walk on
one end and a there is a lot more coverage (pi x r __2). And you 're hitting
your daily movement lower limit of 30 minutes. Or am I really thinking outside
the US box?

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FlannelPancake
Walking sucks in the winter. It's never ridiculously cold (certainly not
midwest or Canada cold), but windchill is frequent and kinda nasty if you have
literally any skin exposed.

Especially in the outer boroughs (not so much in Manhattan), snow doesn't get
cleaned up very quickly either. Walking can definitely be a bit of an obstacle
course - ice, snow banks blocking the sidewalk, etc.

Anyway blah blah blah first world problems, just my perspective on it.

~~~
acveilleux
As a canadian, I find that unconvincing. For the last few years up until this
July, my commute involved a 900m walk to the nearest subway stop (which I
considered nice and short!) year-round. And yes, it took twice as long when
there was 8-12" of fresh snow, which happened ib average every other week in
winter.

City was Montreal.

~~~
FlannelPancake
> And yes, it took twice as long

Yeah, that sucks. If it takes you 12 minutes normally to walk 1 km (assuming 5
km/h, which is a normal walking speed), now it takes you 24 minutes to and
from the station in the winter.

So you're spending 45 minutes a day just walking to and from the station. If
the rest of your commute is 30 minutes (train + walking to work from train),
you're commuting for nearly two hours (1:48) every day vs. 1:24 during the
summer.

That's assuming you don't also walk slower from the train station to work,
which would make it even more of a timesink.

If you lived right near the station, it would be 60 minutes every day, winter
or summer.

I mean yeah, it's only an extra 30-60 minutes a day (and your point was really
only about winter so we'll be fair and say 30 minutes a day), but shit, I'm
not going to turn my nose up at that. I'd definitely pay a small premium to
get that time back every single weekday.

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acveilleux
In Montreal, I can count on the sidewalks being cleared well enough within 48
hours of a big storm and sort of cleared within 8h (< 2" snow, at least 16-20"
wide path, basically one pass of the sidewalk plows.)

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FlannelPancake
As I mentioned above, that's definitely not the case in the outer boroughs of
New York (Manhattan in some cases too, depending on where you are, though I
don't know that for certain).

There have been weeks at a time where I've had to walk in the street because
the sidewalks were just inaccessible or sheets of ice, which makes proximity
to the train station all the more important.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
NYC gets a different kind of snow than Montreal. Plows just breeze through
powder that hasn't been refrozen. Atlantic seaboard snow is a PITA to deal
with.

