I ask because I was reading an article recently about different types of commuting in America, and this commute was mentioned. From what I could gather, it was more or less central Brooklyn, and the article didn’t say where in Manhattan this woman was commuting to. But 90 minutes just seems like an impossibly long time. especially since Brooklyn is right across from Manhattan; if you didn’t know better and weren’t looking at a good enough map, you might not even realize they’re separated by water.
So, first off, was that a misprint? I find it hard to belive that the New Yorker would let one like that, in particular, by.
If not, then what makes subway commuting so slow? Does the train stop so many times (like every other block) that it never has a chance to get to cruising speed? I always imagined that you had to put up with noise and crowding and unpleasant fellow passengers, but still you’d get where you were going quickly.
Brooklyn’s pretty big (it extends farther east than you probably think) and you do make a lot of stops on a local train, so it can definitely take a long time. Do you recall the title of the article or which issue it was in? I would like to read it.
It’s called “There And Back Again”, and you can still read it for free in their online site. Just type “Commuter” into their search window and you’ll find it.
Link not given as deemed quite unnecessary.
One thing the article mentioned that I didn’t think of was that, if you do have a lengthy commute by train or bus, you actually face the problem of getting enough to read to while away all those hours. Books are like “tinder for burning time” as one person said in the article. I’ve always felt, I should have such problems, but I can see where it would be a difficulty–especially if, like the person who said that, you don’t have time to get to a good library because of that long commute.
As an aside, I was interested to learn that the word “commute” comes from the early days of NYC rail commuting, when the railroads would “commute” the fares of daily riders–that is, reduce them.
I’d say that it’s possible.
According to NYC Transit’s travel site, http://travel.mtanyct.info/, Taking the 1 train from the last station in Harlem, 215th St (215th St Station 1 on their site), to the Ocean Pkwy Q stop near Brighton Beach takes 86 minutes if you leave on the 3:01pm train, arriving at 4:28.
In my experience, that site somewhat underestimates travel times.
Now, this is just the subway, no walking included. If you add walking to the station or taking buses, commute time skyrockets. There’s lots of places in Brooklyn, and to a lesser extent Manhattan that are a long way from any subway stop. My girlfriend has a 15 minute walk in manhattan as part of her commute, and that’s downtown, where there are a good number of subway stations. Lots of places in Brooklyn are practically inaccessible by subway and require a bus to get to. Likewise, destinations accessible by subway but far away from a stop are all over the places.
From personal experience, it takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get from Canarsie (Brooklyn) to midtown Manhattan, and that is if you catch all the trains on time. I can see 90 minutes, especially if the person lives somewhere in Brooklyn where there is a bit of a walk to the subway - this is not uncommon, train service in Brooklyn is good but there are some areas where you do have to walk for a while to a train line (most New Yorkers will give their commute time as “door to door,” which includes the walking time, unless they specify otherwise). Other factors could be the local trains which stop often, and a transfer to another train could also add a chunk of time. Or if the L is involved, which is like a slow train to hell.
The NYC subway system covers a HUGE amount of land. A little googling shows that MTA has 656 miles of track (although that number must change every year). By comparison, Chicago has 222 miles.
Having lived in Queens for five years, I could totally believe it. At least once a month I would take a point-to-point trip that would last 90 minutes or longer (Coney Island must’ve been 2 hours). My trip to NYU was 40-50 minutes, and I picked my apartment because it was convenient to Manhattan. As for why people would put up with it, well, housing in the boroughs is affordable, jobs in Manhattan pay well, and you can read on the train.
What are the odds of having a fellow Canarsien here? Or even one that suffers the hell that is the L train?
While weekday commuting can be a tortuous trial, just try it on weekends or after hours - it’s easily double the regular commute time. I used to take a class on Sunday in the city, and it usually took 2 - 2½ hours (the joys of switching tracks at Broadway Junction…)
Sorry for the hijack.
Yes, it can take over 90 minutes to get from Brooklyn to the city.
It takes my son 90 minutes ( and four trains) to get from home to school , and both are in Queens. A lot of it has to with changing trains. I can get from my house to lower Manhattan ( around Canal St) by train in 30 minutes. It’s just one train. To get to midtown will take me over an hour and two trains.
FWIW, I live in Flatbush, which is basically right in the center of Brooklyn, and it takes roughly 35 minutes to get to midtown Manhattan (34th Street.) I live very close to my stop, which is served by an express train.
Back when I lived in Flushing, the 7 train took about 50 minutes into Times Square if you were unlucky enough to get the local. The express wasn’t much faster.
This is all very revealing to me. I don’t feel so bad now about my drive, 20 minutes or so in the morning to work; maybe 30-35 minutes going home, over about 10 miles.
I suffer the hell of the L train, but my stop is Bedford Ave, so it’s an upper circle of hell.
Up until last December, I held the Guinness World Record for traveling to EVERY subway station in the least amount of time - 22 hours, 59 minutes, 51 seconds, so I have plenty of experience in riding the NYC in all hours, in all conditions, to all places around the city.
The longest subway line, in travel time, is the A local, which normally takes 104 minutes to get from 207 St at the upper tip of Manhattan to Far Rockaway, which is a peninsula in Southeast Queens, right on the border of Nassau county. However, the 2 local, which normally takes 97 minutes to get from 241 St in the Bronx to Flatbush Ave/Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, is in reality often the longest route, simply because it has almost twice as many stops as the A local (nearly 60 stops!). If people hold doors at half of those 60 stops, or the police or dispatchers hold the train at some stations, it can easily fall behind schedule, taking nearly two hours to get from the Bronx to Brooklyn.
Unless you’d going from the extreme border of Brooklyn to the extreme border of Manhattan, it shouldn’t take 90 minutes, but the quote takes into account the travel time from your house to the station (which in some parts of Brooklyn, may require a bus ride), as well as waiting time, which can be as high as 24 minutes. So yes, it’s certainly believable that one way commutes can be as high as 90 minutes.
My uncle commuted from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to Lincoln Center, Manhattan, for years. It took him from 60-90 minutes each way. So, not unreasonable.
Again, time and distance have very different meanings in different places. When I lived in the Hudson Valley, you drove 60 miles to meet friends for dinner and it took 60 minutes. When I lived in Astoria, Queens, it took me that long to drive down to my sister’s place in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, which was only 10 miles away as the crow flies.
Here is a nice resource for figuring out approximate commuting travel time. It is like Mapquest, but for the subway/bus systems in NYC, SF, Boston, DC and Chicago.
Enter a starting point and destination and choose mode of transportation and time of departure and it will give you very specific directions to your destination and approx time for every step.
I live in Marine Park and my son will be going to school in Washington Heights next fall. The commute (I’ve done it) is easily 90 minutes, and often more than that.
Brooklyn is “right across from Manhattan” only in the sense of areas of closest approach. Hell, you can walk the Brooklyn Bridge in much less than 90 minutes. Any locations farther out in Brooklyn or farther up in Manhattan, can hardly be described as “right across the river.” And as others have said, getting to the train and changing trains are the killers. Not to mention the locations where you have to transfer to/from a bus.
You might as well say the the UK is “right across the channel” from France, so it shouldn’t take long to get from Aberdeen to Marseilles (especially pre-Chunnel).
