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Please help my husband and I have to attend a graduation in Elizabth, NJ next week in the early evening. We are flying from Detroit but to fly into Newark is double however, to fly into Philadelphia or Laguardia New york is much less.
We are also nervous about safety having out of state plates and being in Elizabeth. Please any advice would help greatly!
You can fly into Philly and take the train up , i believe its 2-3 trains and 1.3hrs. Drops you right off in Downtown Elizabeth. If your Coming form Detroit , then i don't you have anything to worry about. Crime isn't a big issue in most NJ Cities except Camden and Irvington. Its also been going down the past few years. Elizabeth is one of the safer larger cities.
how much is "double", and how much is your time worth? Part of EWR is actually in Elizabeth - that's how close you are. An amtrak ticket from Philadelphia will probably be $60-$70, plus you have to get to the station from the airport. A cab ride from JFK or LGA is going to be $90 easy, and you're going to be rolling along at 8 MPH the whole way.
I'd think it would be worth the money ($200 per ticket?) and time to just fly to EWR.
Please help my husband and I have to attend a graduation in Elizabth, NJ next week in the early evening. We are flying from Detroit but to fly into Newark is double however, to fly into Philadelphia or Laguardia New york is much less.
We are also nervous about safety having out of state plates and being in Elizabeth. Please any advice would help greatly!
I wouldn't worry about out-of-state plates in Elizabeth (if you're flying, however, I'm not sure how that fits in)
I would agree w/ the other posters. Elizabeth borders Newark airport so you would be extremely close. The others major airports are too far so, while you'd save money for the plane ticket itself, you'd make up for it trying to cab/train it to Elizabeth
Skykkell I work at EWR and have to say it's not a bad area for crime.
If you fly in here you will be in Elizabeth as soon as you drive off the airport property.
The airport is technically in Newark but it's right on the town line.
To get into downtown Elizabeth would take 5-20 minutes depending on time of day and traffic. As for worrying about your car and out of state plates don't. There are tons of vehicles around here with out of state tags and they do just fine.
Yes you save money going to JFK or Laguardia but if you have to take a shuttle or taxi it will eat up your savings. Also depending on time of day the traffic from NYC can be horrible. Don't know about Philly but I'm assuming that it's the same. I don't know anyone who flys out of there, it's not worth any savings in time or money.
Good luck!
You can rent a car around Philly and drive to E'town, it's usually about 1 1/2 hrs total.
You can take the NJ Pike which might be about $4, but I rarely use the Pike there and opt for other roads such as I-95 in Philly to US1. There are traffic lights on US1 so it depends on how much of a hurry you are in but I usually make a point of avoidig toll roads when practical.
I'm frugal, thrifty, cheap, whatever you want to call it. But I think it would be very very silly to fly to any of the other airports to go to Elizabeth the difference would have to be pretty large for it to make any kind of sense and even then your really just going to be spending a whole lot of your "vacation" transfering between different modes of transportation. Bite the bullet and fly into Newark it's really not worth the hassle.
Edit: BTW, if you do decide to fly to LaGuardia and take a cab to Elizabeth pretty much the ONLY way you are going to convince any cab driver to take you anywhere NEAR Elizabeth is to lie and say you are going to Newark airport and then switch your story on them once you are already close to your destination. NYC cab drivers only have to take out of town trips at their discretion and trust me Elizabeth NJ is NOT going to be an easy sell. It's not going to be cheap either they will charge you the regular fair all the way to the city limits then after you cross into NJ you have to pay double PLUS round trip tolls (definitely not a cheap, fast or comfortable ride) on your way back the airport you are going to have to give yourself A LOT of time to make sure you don't miss your flight and get a private car service to drive you back to queens (again not going to be cheap) TRUST me take the flight to Newark. I don't know what the drive is like from Philly but I don't advise someone from out of town renting a car and driving through manhattan (in fact I think it should be outlawed).
Last edited by icibiu; 06-14-2010 at 01:59 PM..
Reason: add more info
Driving from Philly to Elizabeth is fairly straightforward and has nothing to do with Manhattan or NYC, it's the other direction. That usually about 1 hr 15 minutes or so and you get to see a bit of the east coast along the way, so if they're into that, it's not a bad alternative.
Definitely don't worry about out of town plates in Elizabeth. I'm a teacher there and it really is not bad. But I have to agree with others. Weight the savings vs. car rental, tolls, gas and time vs. flying into Newark and being 10 minutes away.
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