Best public transit route to NYC from Harrisburg area? (Philadelphia: purchase, calculation)

[parentologist]

Friend wants to travel from Elizabethtown Pa to NYC on a Friday AM and back on Sat PM. She can drive to about an hour from Elizabethtown, park, and get on a train or bus, but her health won't permit driving three hours. What are the options? Amtrak is quite expensive - $112 roundtrip. Greatwall bus is cheaper, but only travels late at night. Greyhound takes too long - over 5 hours - must be changing in Philly. Any other choices?

[slope95]

Originally Posted by parentologist

Friend wants to travel from Elizabethtown Pa to NYC on a Friday AM and back on Sat PM. She can drive to about an hour from Elizabethtown, park, and get on a train or bus, but her health won't permit driving three hours. What are the options? Amtrak is quite expensive - $112 roundtrip. Greatwall bus is cheaper, but only travels late at night. Greyhound takes too long - over 5 hours - must be changing in Philly. Any other choices?

she can try bieber bus, $71 roundtrip from lancaster amtrak to port authority, or $61 roundtrip from reading.

[pman]

Originally Posted by parentologist

Friend wants to travel from Elizabethtown Pa to NYC on a Friday AM and back on Sat PM. She can drive to about an hour from Elizabethtown, park, and get on a train or bus, but her health won't permit driving three hours. What are the options? Amtrak is quite expensive - $112 roundtrip. Greatwall bus is cheaper, but only travels late at night. Greyhound takes too long - over 5 hours - must be changing in Philly. Any other choices?

she could take the train to philly ($46 from etown, $32 from lancaster) and take the bus from there (bolt and megabus leave for ny across the street from 30th st station). additionally she could do the trenton shuffle, amtrak to philly, septa to trenton, and njt to ny. if she's a senior knock ten percent off

[ki0eh]

A couple more thoughts on the value equation, which differs for each individual:

-"Driving an hour" isn't cost free either - 4 to 6 gallons of gas is $14 to $21 up front - plus tolls, parking, and indirect costs. The Elizabethtown station still has free parking, and courtesy of the Federal stimulus no longer has car-swallowing mud puddles (although for overnight they do want folks parking in the nosebleed section out by the Masonic Home).

-AAA (and some other) memberships are good for typical 10% discount on Amtrak with sufficient advance purchase time.

-A substantial portion of the 25 Hz power used by the Amtrak trains on this route comes from the Safe Harbor Dam, using the power of the falling Susquehanna River instead of tar sands or terrorist oil.

[judd2401]

Rohrer bus co in Duncannon, PA has cheap round trips to NYC.

[pman]

shuster thinks its too cheap

The Pennsylvania lawmaker touted his use of Amtrak service between Harrisburg, Pa. and Philadelphia, saying he thought it was so confident that he should be charged more for it.

“Every time I get on that train and I look at the ticket price and I figure on the back of the envelope calculation, I should paying more for it,” Shuster said. “I’m prime time. They’re not making money. I think they’ve inched it up some, but when I do the back on the envelope on gas, tolls, parking, my productivity goes from zero when I’m driving to 100 percent.”

Read more: Transit debate roils infrastructure funding hearing | TheHill
always bugs me when politicians say things like this, he probably isn't even paying for it. one of the bigger problems is the lack of rush hour service and the inadequate number of trains on saturday and sunday