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My husband used to work at a co-op on 79th street and lived here on SI. He needed to be at work at 7am and in order to get there on time, had to leave at 5 am and then be early. He tried every which way to find some way to leave later and either the buses or subways were too packed and he'd have to wait for the next one(s). So even though it might be an hour on a good day, it could very easily be two hours on any day - for whatever reason - rain, snow, the president passing through, a jumper on a bridge, etc.
So maybe to add to the sticky is: even if the timing of the trip is 1.5 hours, you have to plan for a full bus/train with no room for you - or the train is early and you have to wait for the next one - so add at least 1/2 hour to the trip.
I dont even leave NJ and my commute is 1-1.5hrs. Using Buses and Trains gets me to the office in about 2.5hrs which includes walking a total of about 1/2 mile at various points along the trip.
I would like to add a few things...
-Urban does not = crime infested.
-Diversity means nothing in one of the most diverse states in the country. I do not believe you will find ANY City/town/borough/village in NJ that is entirely made up of one ethnicity.
-Living in NJ is cheaper than living in Mahattan, but it is not cheap by any means. The only other places in the country that come close to or equal the cost of living in NJ is LA/SFO, Chicago, Miami, maybe Houston/Dallas. And those are cities not the majority of the entire state!!!
-Yes, its true, you don't pump your own gas here.
-No, you cannot get a CCW permit here.
-Drive right, pass left. If you are not prepared to travel faster than the speed limit, do not drive in the left lane, period.
-We are not rude here, we simply have no time to deal with your BS.
-Having said that, "Eff you" and "Have a nice day" can be used interchangeably. (just kidding, depending on who your friends are)
Great schools, friendly and diverse community, walkable downtown, plenty of outdoor space, nearby beach/lake, and a < 1hr door to door commute to NYC. All for $1500/month (rent) or $300,000 and <$6000 property taxes (buy), in recent construction. Where are you going to find all that? Not here, that's for sure :-)
Exactly. People who don't commute haven't any idea of the intracacies involved. If any of these would-be residents are reading this, here are my own commuting details.
It takes me about 7 minutes to drive from my house to my train station (which costs me $360 a year to park there) and then I need a couple of minutes to walk through the lot and get to the other side of the tracks because the parking spaces on the side of the tracks where in the inbound trains are go to the residents of the town where the train station is. Meaning, if I leave my house one minute too late for some reason, I will be standing on the other side of the train tracks watching my train fill up with the passengers who got there on time and will have to wait another 10/15/25 minutes for the next one.
It takes me about 55 minutes to get to Newark Penn Station. I get off the train there and switch to PATH. Usually there is one waiting or about to arrive, but other times the train is full or there are delays. Mostly I make the connection, though.
It then takes about 18 - 20 minutes on PATH, usually standing, to get to Exchange Place in Jersey City. I then have a five-minute walk to the office. Total commute time is therefore around one and a half hours, and I'm not even in Manhattan.
In the office we moved from, it was NJ Transit to Hoboken, PATH Hoboken to 23rd Street, and an eight-minute walk to the office. Total time was around 2 hours.
From Midland Park, my commute was: leave the house and walk a block to where the bus to the city stops. Get on the bus and get a free ride showing my monthly rail ticket to Ridgewood train station, about a six-minute ride. Catch the Ridgewood train to Hoboken, and then the PATH to 23rd. Total time was about and hour and 20 minutes. Now if you look at NJ Transit's train schedule, you can see that on an express train, Ridgewood to Hoboken is about 35 minutes. On a non-express, 45. Those numbers on that schedule do not tell the whole story.
Even when I worked at the World Trade Center, it was at least an hour and ten minutes, including getting up to the office from the PATH well, lol, which involved the big escalators and two elevators to get to my floor!
MQ, while I'm fortunate to not have to deal with the train commute in Glen Rock, having to watch folks EVERY MORNING make their last minute dash makes me feel for them. It's amazing how every minute in each household is obviously timed to perfection. Yet a couple things that can and do throw people off their course will eventually send people into spasm. Nothing worse than running in a suit on a hot humid day...women in 2" pumps doing the same. The everyday hustle.
"Realistic vs. Unrealistic Expectations for Aspiring NJ Residents Who Need to Commute to Manhattan" (since this seems to be 1 out of 4 posts lately...)
- Your door to door commute won't be 20 minutes long, even if you live in a tent on the banks of the Hudson
- You won't be able to find a 4 br, 2.5 ba, 3000sf house on an acre of land in the NYC 'burbs for $100K, or $800/mo to rent; and yes, your property taxes really CAN be that expensive--we get that you paid $67K for that kind of house in your old city/state, with $1K/yr in property taxes, but it's not going to happen here
- The places with the fastest/easiest commutes won't have stellar public schools--you'll have to prioritize one over the other to some extent
- Don't be upset or defensive when people nicely try to make you understand these things--if you are so easily ruffled, perhaps you should rethink your decision to move to NJ
We need to add that you must forget the travel time estimates given on GoogleMaps, Mapquest and the like. The times indicated by such websites are outright laughable and do not take into account things such as stop lights or traffic, let alone road construction. As a general rule when trying to estimate the actual realistic commute time, take whatever googlemaps or mapquest says, multiply it by 2 and add 10%.
KoalaNJ
Last edited by KoalaNJ; 08-29-2012 at 08:26 PM..
Reason: edited to correct grammar
The other one that drives me nuts is that these people all specify that they want to live somewhere safe, as if unsafe is the default in NJ. Of course you want to live somewhere safe. Do you even have to SAY that?
Sure. Because otherwise those of us of the overly literal persuasion (or who woke up under a bridge this morning) will start suggesting inexpensive places with a decent commute which aren't "safe".
I do think it's really hard to understand, for people who aren't from around here. NYC commuting is unlike anything else--as we've said, it involves moving hundreds of thousands of people each day, from one incredibly densely populated area, to an even more incredibly densely populated freaking ISLAND, with a couple of bridges and a couple of tunnels, which also happens to be the largest city in the US by far, and everyone needs to get onto the island at essentially the same time, then off it at the same time, several hours later. How could the commute be anything but insane? It's kind of amazing that everyone usually gets where they need to go every day, at all.
That said, if you're seriously considering a move here, you're not doing yourself any favors by having ridiculously unrealistic expectations. And I admit that I sometimes read posts from those considering moving here, and can't help but think "Oh, honey, NJ is going to eat you alive."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
^^^ These are all great.
How about "Everybody who has children wants 'great schools'. There is no need to specify that. You will get the schools that exist in the town you can afford."
The other one that drives me nuts is that these people all specify that they want to live somewhere safe, as if unsafe is the default in NJ. Of course you want to live somewhere safe. Do you even have to SAY that?
Wouldn't you love to see a post where someone says "My family of 4 is moving to NJ for my spouse's job. We don't care at all about safety--we like to live on the edge. And we've already given up on our kids, they're pretty dumb, so they can definitely attend the crappiest schools your state has to offer."
"Realistic vs. Unrealistic Expectations for Aspiring NJ Residents Who Need to Commute to Manhattan" (since this seems to be 1 out of 4 posts lately...)
- Your door to door commute won't be 20 minutes long, even if you live in a tent on the banks of the Hudson
This is all very funny, because it holds a lot of truth. But the flip side is also funny to me. NJ commuters love to exaggerate how bad their commute is. I commuted to NYC for 6.5 years, mostly from Hoboken, but then from West Orange. in those years, there were less than 10 instances where the PATH was delayed (that's counting to NY and to NJ) in any significant manner that impacted my commute time. Same thing with the Bus to PABT from Hoboken. My door to door commute from hoboken was about 65 minutes, depending on what time I hit the PATH. Then i moved to West Orange, and because i was the last stop on the Community Coach bus route, my door to door commute was 55 minutes. This was to midtown on 42nd and lexington, so i didn't have far to go from PABT, but i did cross town. I've got good schools, i'm close to walkable downtowns with millburn and south orange, and i'm in a safe location. i'm pretty happy! (though my taxes suck) hehe.
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