And I’ve never heard RTA or road traffic accident. MVA for motor vehicle accident, perhaps, but I wouldn’t expect that term to be used by the general public.
You’ll need to verify but parking at the ferry in Port Imperial Weehawken is only $20 a day
From there you can take a ferry to Midtown (about 10 min) or Downtown Manhattan (about 15 - 30 minutes depending on stops).
You also have the option of taking the Hudson-Bergen light rail from there if you want to explore the Jersey City / Hoboken / Weehawken area. That area has become almost like a 6th borough of New York
It’s a lot nicer than trying to schlep in from Newark.
I will agree with others that if the plan is to stay in LES Manhattan, the best strategy would be to use a park-and-travel type lot near the airports or the rail hubs on the other side of the rivers, then transit in.
Now the notion of tolls is another “please help this naff tourist” topic I need to raise separately but what is pay by plate?
They take a photo of your license plate if you don’t have an transponder and bill the registered keeper. Since you are renting, the rental company gets the bill. For the courtesy of paying the tolls for you, they will charge you a surcharge which is highly variable.
We paid $1.50 per day that we incurred tolls in California with Enterprise. Five years ago in Florida we paid $10 per toll charge ($80 in five days) with either Avis or Hertz (don’t remember).
There’s no help for it. They charge you a surcharge even if there’s a transponder.
Filling in a bit, almost all US toll collection is fully automated. Either your car has a radio “transponder” that has an established account at the tolling agency, or your car has old-fashioned metal license plates that the tolling station can read with a camera & send the bill to the car’s owner. Whether that’s a private citizen or a rental car company.
Some rental companies really rip off people driving their cars on toll roads. Others charge a trivial mark-up over what the tolling agency charges them.
As with all things US, there are 50 states doing at least 50 different things. Some states have many toll roads, some have none. There is a Federal law which is forcing interoperability between all states’ tolling systems, but the phase-in of interoperability is still ongoing.
Going back to the original question about leaving a car outside NYC for a few days I’ll just point out that depending on which direction you’re coming from very different answers make sense.
Approaching from the south, the northeast, the west, or the northwest each afford different answers in specific. But the general idea of dumping the car for any/all operations on Manhattan island is a good one no matter which way you’re coming towards the city.
He’ll already have a rental car, due to using it for the rest of the trip; turning it in then renting another one would be a HUGE hassle, not to mention the need to take ALL of his belongings out of the car.
If you do park it outside the city, make sure it’s some place reasonably secure, and have all your possessions out of sight: car breakins do happen anywhere. And consider how much luggage you want to drag with you on transit to get into the city - you won’t want all your clothing, for example.
Another option would be to just bite the bullet and drive into the city, and pay the hotel’s parking rate. It will be expensive, but as part of your overall trip budget it can’t be all that much. We parked in downtown Los Angeles a year back, and it was 50 dollars a day; I seem to recall Manhattan rates being 60-80 a day but having never done that, I could be wrong.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet, simply parking at an airport. Newark International certainly has parking garages, and if you go for long-term parking, it’s likely to be 20-30 a day. Just guessing on the cost there, I have not looked it up, but the last time we parked at an airport’s long-term lot it was that or even less (2 weeks at BWI). There is a bus from there to several locations in Manhattan:
Aviation.
And finally: any local-to-NYC dopers out there who could offer some driveway space?
Good point!! Look into getting an EZ-Pass (which seems to be the standard); I don’t know if you can walk in anyplace and acquire one; when we got ours 15+ years ago we got it by mail.
We used to have to use a separate one in Florida - theirs was a SunPass. On a trip about a year ago, we found out on the drive down (from the mid-Atlantic) that they now accepted EZ Pass. Because I was concerned over being charged twice due to having both transponders in the car, I wrapped our SunPass in foil left over from one of our sandwiches.
A few weeks later, I found this odd foil-wrapped lump in the car, thought “hmm, someone did not throw out their trash!”, and tossed it. Whoops!
We always bring our EZ-Pass when renting a car for a driving trip. One time, one of the toll readers did not detect it (when others on the same jaunt had no problem), and the rental agency charged us the toll plus a 10 dollar markup. Ouch.
Portable transferrable transponders are a thing in some jurisdictions, not all.
In FL we have both, but the portables are being phased out. My transponder is a credit-card like sticker that glues to the windshield and is destroyed by removal.
I think “EZ-Pass” is the Federal moniker for the universal system. As you say, Florida’s SunPass system accepts EZ-Pass and EZ-Pass elsewhere accepts SunPass. Georgia’s PeachPass is part of the same group. I don’t drive much past there, so I have no firm knowledge which other states use EZ-Pass although I think I recall seeing signs in TX that say they are EZ-Pass too.
Sometimes, the rental company will rent you an EZ Pass (for a fee). Regarding parking at the airport, as I mentioned, you’re better off parking at one of the parking places near the airport (assuming Newark Airport) – cheaper, better service.
OP: What is the previous place before NYC you were your were going to visit and what is the place you will be visiting after you leave NYC? [The link suggests Washington, DC and Toronto.]
Prior stop is Gettysburg (on 4th of July as it turns out).
Next stop is Niagara NP though I might take an overnight break in transit.
I will just point out that when I googled LES hotel, NY, the one I found is called LES Madison which is on something called Madison St. (not Madison Ave.) under the Manhattan bridge and just a couple blocks from the East River and not readily accessible by Subway. I don’t know about city buses, but schlepping luggage on buses is no prize. The last time I parked in a NY garage it was just east of Union Square (14th between 1st and 2nd Aves.) and it cost $35 a day around 2000).
Back when we got our SunPass, the EZ-Pass did NOT work in Florida. that does seem to have been sorted out by the universal system, fortunately. I don’t think the SunPass would have worked on toll roads further north, though I don’t think we challenged that: when we drove further afield, we typically had a rental vehicle.
The sticker-only version sounds like a real pain in the neck. Really ties it to a single car. Though if they don’t charge for the sticker (we have to carry a balance of 35.00 per unit) it may be more feasible to get multiples. The condo we’re in the process of selling has a sticker-based system to get into and out of the gated community - which is a real pain if you’re popping out with a family member or whatever.
I know EZPass works all the way up the Eastern Seaboard to Maine, and as far west as Illinois / Wisconsin. We haven’t tried it anywhere else.
Ah - then you’ll drive right by Hershey! (assuming you like Hershey chocolate, it’s worth a short stop, though July and chocolate are not the best combination while travelling).
And Newark International is right on the way, if you wind up doing that option.
FL’s SunPass definitely works in GA & GA’s PeachPass definitely works in FL. Past that I have no recent personal knowledge.
Funny, I think the portable transponder sounds like a total PITA. Diff’rent strokes!
Just install a sticker in each car and forget about the damn thing. That way you can treat all toll roads (and tolled express lanes on ordinary freeways) just like they were untolled. Just get in and drive. If I had to have a portable transponder it would always be in the car I’m not. One more thing to need to remember before driving. SunPass even works to pay for airport parking at FLL. It used to work at MIA but they stopped. Damn.
I drive on a tolled road nearly every day I use the car, so it just becomes invisible.
We have to carry a small balance ($10?), but that’s for your total account, not per transponder. It’s rigged to a credit card to auto refill as necessary and you can configure how much they take at a whack.
The stickers sell for ~$2 at any grocery store or convenience market. The portable transponders are more like $20.
Agree that living in a secure community of whatever sort adds a PITA when people come to visit. We deal with that here. The easiest solution I’ve found is to have no friends. 
.
You don’t really think about the movable transponders either (unless, like us, you have a suction-cup mount that very occasionally falls off). A sticker version absolutely would be better in terms of being slightly less obtrusive, but the portable version is useful if you’re going to be, say, renting a car and don’t want to get price-gouged.
The only downside there is: the EZPass came with adhesive strips with heavy-duty hook-and-loop backs, to adhere to the windshield, which matched up with strips on the device itself. So if you needed to remove it, you’d just tear the thing loose (which took a fair bit of strength, as I recall) - and press it back into place when you were ready to use it in that car again. The downside being, rental cars don’t typically have that hook-and-loop mount - which was why we bought a suction-cup version.
As far as having one in the OP’s rental car: you can check with the agency to see if they offer them, or it may be relatively easy to procure one (we got ours 16 years ago, and replaced them once by mail, so I don’t know current logistics). I don’t know how common toll roads are on most of your trip - for example, we drove down the Pacific Coast a year back, and I don’t recall any anywhere in Oregon or California. I don’t recall seeing any when we visited the Southwest back in 2010 either. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist though.
Parts of the Midwest may be toll roads; we’ve driven to Chicago / Milwaukee and paid tolls on the turnpikes in the various states, and there’s a toll for part of the way north toward Milwaukee. Dunno about other areas in those states.
But when you get to the Northeast… oh yeah. In New Jersey especially. Depending on how you get from Gettysburg to the NY metro area, quite possibly (Google maps suggests either taking the PA turnpike to the NJ turnpike, or heading north around Harrisburg and I-78 east). Most of those roads have ways to pay at toll gates, but it’s easier / faster / potentially cheaper to have the transponder. Going north into New England (Connecticut / Rhode Island / Massachusetts / New Hampshire) there are tolls a good bit of the way at least along I-95.
Yeah, I was going to say if the OP could swing it, it might just be better to suck it up and park at the hotel or nearby. I know the last thing I want to do when I travel is lug a bunch of luggage through several modes of transportation for an hour so I can get my car.
It’s funny, but on my last trip to NYC (I used to live there) I just parked on the street where I used to live, a block from the subway, left my car where I wouldn’t get ticketed for a few days, left nothing visible in my car, locked up, carried a suitcase on the subway to where I was staying in Manhattan, and took my suitcase back on the subway to my car when I was ready to leave. Didn’t cost me a nickel.
Hah - you benefitted from your knowledge of the city, there! I don’t necessarily recommend that to someone who is not familiar with the city. 30 years back, I actually lived in Manhattan on a long-term project - I commuted home most weekends. My brother and SIL wanted to come to NYC for the weekend to see a show, so I left apartment keys for them, and they drove to the city, and parked somewhere that they were certain was legal.
Next morning, their car had been towed. They swore it was NOT illegally parked and it was a scam - but in any case, they had to spend several hours finding where it had gone, going to that location, and paying a large fine to get the car out of impound, at which point they just headed right back out of town.