Where the New York City Subway Doesn't Go | Hacker News Reader

Where the New York City Subway Doesn't Go

citylab.com

32 pointsqzervaas44 comments

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.

It really is wacky.

I understand why the author made the omission though. I've been on public bus systems in many major US cities and they are entirely the domain of the elderly, handicapped or impoverished.

The NYC bus system though is used by all walks of life, much like the subway itself. In a way I'm glad that the bus system is seen by transplants as less sexy because it keeps the rents in all those neighborhoods not directly serviced by subway lines much cheaper. With Bus Time and a huge fleet [1] of buses, the NYC bus system is often more reliable than the trains.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_local_bu...

BusTime has radically changed the experience of waiting for a bus.

I mentioned this in another comment but really BusTime has been one of the greatest public transit innovations in NYC of the past 20 years.

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.

Bus routes are not supposed to replace train routes. It is by design that bus routes are longer, buses are meant to service areas not accessible by train.

I'm curious if you traveled by bus since the introduction of bus time last year? It has really changed my commuting life. In the past I might be standing out in the cold or heat for a half hour waiting for the next bus. Now I can predict when my bus will show up and spend mere minutes waiting for it.

> Bus routes are not supposed to replace train routes. It is by design that bus routes are longer, buses are meant to service areas not accessible by train.

I agree! I only mean that, when making a map of public transit coverage in a city, it might make sense to recognize that bus transportation is, in many cases, very inconvenient to avoid the impression that everyone is served equally.

I left New York before Bus Time was introduced, but I'm glad to hear it has improved the experience of waiting for a bus.

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.

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

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.

Queen was really a trip for this ex-Manhattanite. Lived there for a few months a few years ago -- remember that winter that shut all the /buses/? Couldn't get a ride to Flushing stop for a few days there and had to winter wonderland trek.

You need a car in Queens.

The NY subway is filthy, hot, and loud. (Other systems, like DC Metro, are much nicer). "Sexy" tastes may vary, but buses are much nicer rides when you can get them.

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.

Maybe they're used to SimCity. Sims walk about 400 meters.

It's a useful metric, IIR the Paris Metro is designed so that no point in the city is more than 500m from a station.

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.

Note: 500m is 2 long blocks (Avenues); 6 street blocks.

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.

Yup. Three major lines (BMT Nassau, IND Sixth Ave, IND Eighth Ave) converge in Jamaica, where it's only a few minutes' walk to transfer to the AirTrain to JFK. I've never had a problem getting to/from JFK via train, but LGA is a little tougher (though the increased 125th St. bus service has helped a lot).

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

Yeah, they're not counting AirTrain. You can get to it from the J, the E, and the A, actually.

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.

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

There's a pretty decent bus, it costs $2.75, and if you can spare a an extra ~30m travel time, it's worth it.

http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/NewQ70LimitedStopService_br...

Is there one-seat service to any of the three major area airports from midtown Manhattan? There's an NJT stop for EWR, but it requires a transfer to AirTrain (the internal EWR rail system).

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.

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?

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.

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

http://m.nydailynews.com/opinion/extend-7-train-secaucus-art...

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

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.

PATH was screwed up for years after 9/11.

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

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

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 r2). And you're hitting your daily movement lower limit of 30 minutes. Or am I really thinking outside the US box?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.)

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.

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.

You worked in the Mile-end?x ;)

I was just figuring that 1km is about what I would call 'metro-adjacent' for a residence.

I worked downtown near gare centrale and lived in Hochelaga near Ontario/Joliette.

Used to live on Waverley near Van Horne and I worked on Querbes and on Parc in mile-end though so I know what you mean. Fuck the rail track...

New Yorkers walk more than any other city I've lived in. In fact, about a year after I moved out of NYC to Saigon I gained quite a few extra pounds because I wasn't walking nearly the same amount. Which used to be about 5-6 miles a day in NYC on an average day.

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