I live in New York City and I’m finding that every time some alternative comes up to taking the subway or the bus to work, someone finds a way to make it impossible or extremely inconvenient for me to take advantage of it.
For example:
I own a car. It is cost-prohibitive to drive it to work every day. It costs me over $500 a month to garage it next to my apartment. To pay an additional few hundred a month for access to the lot next to work would make a ridiculous situation even more so.
I own a bike. I can’t take it to work because there are no bike racks. I can’t take the bike into my building because the building management doesn’t allow it. I can’t leave it locked to a parking meter either - the last time I did that, I came back to find most of my bike’s components stolen.
I thought about getting one of those little gas scooters. No dice. Giuliani says they’re unregistered motor vehicles, so he’s instructed the cops to pull them over and ticket the hell out of the folks who ride them. But there’s no way to legally register them, either. So I guess they’re just plain illegal…
It’s too far to walk. Or to take a skateboard or stupid razor scooter or whatever.
Private limos/taxicabs are expensive as hell ($12-$15 each way).
I can’t take public transportation. First of all, the buses move at about walking pace, so you don’t save any time whatsoever by taking them to work. The subways are a freaking mess. The 6 train (the one I have to take to work) is about as crowded as they come. I’m tired of schmucks who have no respect for people’s personal space breathing down my neck with their nasty garlic breath. I’m tired of the jerks who act like it’s the end of the world if they don’t manage to shoehorn themselves into the very first train that comes by their platform. And most of all, I’m tired of the delays, the service interruptions, the random “let’s move the local train to the express track” bullshit and all the other crap that subway riders have to put up with.
Mr. Giuliani, I hope that whoever takes over for you in Gracie Mansion will start looking into transportation alternatives. Can’t we just let things go with regard to the little gas scooters? If enough people rode these things to work, we could get rid of a lot of traffic and probably a lot of pollution too (I’m sure the scooters have a respectable MPG and run cleaner than the crappy jalopies that people drive in NYC). Give me some freaking alternatives already!
I agree that commuting to and from NYC can be a royal pain in the (*&(^.
All I can say is, I think you should shop around.
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I’ve seen high level employees get turned away from my building for trying to bring bikes in. It seems unfair. I wonder if the people at the parking lot next door would cut you a deal?
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I agree that the buses and subways are unpleasant. My co-workers are surprised that I drive to work every day, but in my mind, it’s much better to be in a traffic jam than a “people jam.”
Well I certainly hope you weren’t expecting him to divert his attention to an unimportant subject like efficient and reliable public transportation being…well, efficient and reliable. He does have more important things to worry about, like spending our hard-earned taxes on a new stadium for the Yankees (who don’t need a new one) and the Mets (who do). Don’t get me wrong, I like baseball and the Mets, but I really don’t want to pay for a new stadium for either of these teams. They are both *for-profit[/] organizations. They should use their profit to pay their own way.
I’m a former subway rider. Fortunately, I now work close enough to the Port Authority to walk to work from my NJ bus (which also sucks, by the way). But I remember the “E” train station at Madison and 53rd in the summer. Walking into hell would have been cooler and the service was wretched!
Well I certainly hope you weren’t expecting him to divert his attention to an unimportant subject like efficient and reliable public transportation being…well, efficient and reliable. He does have more important things to worry about, like spending our hard-earned taxes on a new stadium for the Yankees (who don’t need a new one) and the Mets (who do). Don’t get me wrong, I like baseball and the Mets, but I really don’t want to pay for a new stadium for either of these teams. They are both for-profit organizations. They should use their profit to pay their own way.
I’m a former subway rider. Fortunately, I now work close enough to the Port Authority to walk to work from my NJ bus (which also sucks, by the way). But I remember the “E” train station at Madison and 53rd in the summer. Walking into hell would have been cooler and the service was wretched!
Jeez, since every last thing must be FOR PROFIT in this country, you’d think that the local auto parks would install a bike rack or two, then charge a nominal fee for bike owners to park there. Guess that wouldn’t help you at home, though.
As for mopeds and scooters: in France for example, motor vehicles under 50cc do not need to be licenced and are exempt from parking fees. OTOH, such vehicles are so ludicrously easy to steal that I wonder if it’s economical to have one, if its going to be nicked very few months. I’ve lost count of the number of lonely scooter front wheels I’ve seen locked to a hefty chain around a post or tree in Paris…
My fellow employees and I lobbied our boss to let building management to get the bug out of its ass and let us take our bikes inside. We finally convinced them to let us take the freight elevator and park somewhere unobtrusive.