Yeah coming from Ireland, the distances in the US blow my mind. Last trip, we drove from Cleveland, OH to CT. I couldn’t believe how empty and vast Pennsylvania felt. Scranton was the only city/town of any great size we passed through on our route.
I lived in central NJ not far from the PA border, on 95, and we often went to the mall across the border. No tolls that way. Going into NY is a different story.
I’m a native New Yorker who live around Princeton for 15 years, and now live in the Bay Area, so I know both coasts. The difference is the density of cities. From the Bay Area to LA on I5 (sorry, the five for you LAers) is traffic-free until you get to the Grapevine. Even using 101 you might run into traffic around Santa Barbara, but nowhere else from San Jose on down. The same trip in the East runs you through several cities. (I went to school in Cambridge, and know the Boston to NY route quite well.) There are stretches of country, but not as many and they don’t stretch as far.
I also drove from NY to Champaign IL in a day, and once you get out of the East Coast corridor things spread out and it is more like California. Old sf stories called the corridor BosWash, which is still more or less true.
Well, Baltimore is a harbor city (within eyeshot of my house)… so I would say that it’s absolutely adjacent to a state border (along the border with international waters).
And really, BWI to Bethesda is only a shade over 30 miles from Bethesda. Would you have them landing planes on Main Street in Bethesda for your convenience?
The Chesapeake Bay is not international waters…
The distance from BWI to Bethesda via shuttle when arriving on a late flight cannot be measured by mere miles.
Usually *after *the toll booth, though. Priorities, ya know.
A trip on 95 helps one understand why Delaware doesn’t need a sales tax.
I live in MD and work in VA. About 95% of my commute is in DC, though. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it takes me about 45 minutes to drive 10 miles.
I was surprised to learn that, in his days as a senator Joe Biden commuted by Amtrak every day from Delaware (Dover, IIRC). To someone on the West Coast that sounds like a huge distance, but, from looking at the map is entirely doable.
Wilmington, I thought. Even with stops, Amtrak will get you from there to Union Station, right behind the Capitol, in 90 minutes. Plus, he didn’t do it every day, and he could get stuff done on the ride, too.
Acela, and especially Acela business class, is a remarkably civilized way to travel these days – no security hassles, it’s often on time, and they have a Quiet Car with no cellphone use.
Hmm, so obviously not universal, then. I travelled from Somerset County to Harrisburg fairly often, and there’s a big toll plaza on 78 just at the PA stateline. No tolls entering NJ there, only leaving.
It is also common IME for East Coast people to travel quite a lot, often interstate, for seasonal vacation homes that they either rent or own. From Boston, you might well have a condo that you rent for skiing in N.H. or Vt., or a beach place in Nantucket or R.I. In New York, a couple hours drive/train will get you to the Hamptons (beach), Jersey Shore (ditto), Conn. (ditto, or country place), the Berkshires (country place/skiing), or the Poconos or Bucks County (Penn.) (skiing/fishing/antiquing/country place). In D.C., the Eastern Shore (Md.) (beach, seafood) and the Maryland/Delaware beaches are popular Summer weekend destinations to rent or own a place. Some people may do this for a week each Summer/Winter, some go almost every weekend.
I’m in the Boston area, and two incidents stand out in my mind as to how absolutely true this is:
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In the Tampa/St. Pete area on vacation with a now ex, we looked at a map of FL and thought, “Hey, why not drive down to Key West? That can’t be more than a 3 or 4 hour drive!” Ten hours later we roll into town.
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On a roadtrip to KY with a friend, it astounded me that it took us almost 6 hours to cross a small diagonal portion of PA, west of Philadelphia. There was nothing but corn fields, cows, and the occasional silo on either side of the turnpike :boggle:
To my itty-bitty New England born-and-bred frame of mind, a road trip is driving from Boston to Albany. I can’t even fathom navigating Maine…
Heh. Keep in mind that you were still in the east. The rural east, to be certain, but still the east. You probably went through some public forest lands, but a lot of the trip would have been crossing farm land dotted with small towns. I grew up in rural PA. It can be irritating to find people in the US Mountain States that seem to think that everything east of the Mississippi River is paved, but when all is said and done, the rural east is no where near as “empty and vast” as the west.
Consider it your introduction to US distances. You may continue your course of study further west. Your graduation ceremony will be to drive across Nevada on US 50:
As others have already said, travel on “the East Coast” is relatively straightforward if you consider it as the “Northeast Corridor” extending from Boston to NYC to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington, DC. They’re all connected by rail, bus and highway and there’s no “nothing” in between like there is if you go west - like the 5-6 hours from Philly to Pittsburgh with good traffic within the state of Pennsylvania. (Sorry, Harrisburg.) But if you’re adding “Cincinnati, OH” to your mental list of “East Coast” cities, you need to look closer at the map… Cincinnati is over 600 miles away from the Atlantic, and is basically a Midwest city in line with Chicago and Indianapolis. (The term “Midwest” of course being somewhat of a historical artifact as it is still 1,000 miles east of the Rocky Mountains, which people from truly Western states assume is the natural East-West divide while us folks on the Atlantic think “Mississippi River”).
With good traffic and no rest stops, I have personally driven from Baltimore to NYC in just over three hours, and to Washington DC in just under four hours; and from NYC to Boston in 3-1/2 hours. But that’s really under optimal conditions and possibly illegal rates of traveling. I’ve also taken 6 hours to go from NYC to Baltimore and 6-1/2 hours to go from Boston to NYC.
You want to know why New Yorkers (from NYC) have a tendency to disparage New Jersey? It’s because overwhelmingly, our impression of the state comes from experiences and views like this: Typical NJ Turnpike HELL
Look at it this way. The driving distance from New York to Boston is 218 miles. and from New York to Washington on I-95 is 228 miles.
The driving distance from Dallas to Houston on I-35 is 239 miles.
From Kansas City to St. Louis on I-70 is 249 miles.
Sioux Falls to Rapid City, SD on I-90, 350 miles.
Chicago to Cairo, Il on I-57, 372 miles.
Those are all in-state distances, and not considered particularly long trips in their parts of the country.
I think every turnpike/interstate on the Northeast Corridor has their own version of NJ Turnpike Hell :eek:
Without traffic, I’m less than a 15-minute drive from downtown. With traffic, it’s taken me over an hour to travel the exact same route.
I’m so happy I work in the suburbs now.
:faints:
That’s actually quite beautiful, in a twisted way: there are SPACES between the cars. Which tells me you’re travelling at 60+ miles an hour, not stopped in rush-hour hell.
No, it’s not ideal for travelling at that speed, but it looks an awful lot like the Beltway hereabouts (VA suburbs of Washington DC) at 6 PM, Jersey barriers and construction equipment included. :D.
There’s about a dozen bridges that cross from NJ to PA along the Delaware River. The vast majority of them are tolled. Oddly enough, the I-95 bridge just north of Trenton is (I think) the only highway bridge that’s free. I know for sure it’s the only highway bridge from Trenton all they way south that’s not tolled.
There are a couple other minor (meaning local) bridges in the Trenton NJ/Morrisville PA area that are similarly free. A little bit ago, the Delaware River Port Authority and the Burlington Bridge Commission got together and set it up so for all of the bridges from NJ to PA in the Trenton/Morrisvile and Philadelphia/South Jersey would be one way - to “improve congestion”.
I think this also happened for the NYC bridges at the same time, but I’m not 100% sure since I’m from the Delaware River side of the state.
This is probably pretty sad I can identify, but if anyone’s curious, that appears to be northbound on the NJ turnpike as you approach exit 7 (US 206/Bordentown). The construction is because of a huge project to add (up to) a full 3 lanes in each direction to the turnpike between Exits 6 and 9. Wiki