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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

"best public transporation" for New York City? Bah. I categorically reject the notion that any city which has the longest commute times in the entire country as having a good transportation system [1].

I had a friend who was born and raised in the New York City area. I couldn't tell you what borough specifically. He was used to that insane commute. Wake up early, ride the train(s) for 90 minutes, work, ride them for 90 minutes home, have dinner, and go to bed. This is what he considered normal. When he moved to a city that doesn't have a broken transportation system and his daily commute time went from 3 hours to 30 mintues he said "Wow. So this is what it's like to be alive! I didn't realize this is what being an actual person was like".

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-yorkers-havelongest-...

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> I categorically reject the notion that any city which has the longest commute times in the entire country as having a good transportation system

By how much? What's the variance like compared to other cities? Are we comparing NYC commute times to cities that don't have public transportation systems used en masse? If I live in Houston and drive 15 minutes to work, is it really fair to compare it to spending 30 minutes on a subway?

"Average commute time" isn't extremely relevant if we're including cities where most people don't commute by public transportation, given the subject of the article.

> I had a friend who was born and raised in the New York City area...

I spend 15 minutes commuting to work each day in NYC, compared to 45 when I was in SF. Based on that fact, I can conclusively say that SF's transportation system is 3x worse than NYC's based on my personal anecdote.

...what? It's highly objective that New York has the worst commute times in the country. I shared one link on it. There are countless more. Here's another that has more numbers for other cities. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//longest... If you object to their methodology

31.5% of NYC workers have a commute time longer than 60 minutes. That's insane.

You didn't answer any of my questions.

While NYC definitely has nice public transit coverage, parts of the city are kind of a mess (cough cough G train cough cough). Hell, even travelling from Astoria to upper Manhattan can be a mess, or crosstown, or whatever. I def had a shorter commute from San Jose to Mountain View than I did within NYC. That said, if you are wealthy enough to live in Manhattan or off one of the nice train lines in Brooklyn, life can be pretty good.

I question if you can spend 90 min on a train in New York. It's only like 50 min to Connecticut on the metro north.

Also, my commute these days is about an hour and 20 min each way. 45 min Amtrak, 20 min walking, 15 min metro. Way preferable to a 30-40 min car commute.

Ya dude but Metro North isn't making tons of stops. East New York to the Bronx Zoo is def approaching two hours, kinda long for a weekend outing with the family. Factor in time spent waiting for a train, walking to the train, etc, and the number gets higher.

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