Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The thing to keep in mind with suburban NJ commutes is that you need to factor in the commuting time on NJ Transit (typically 35-40 minutes at minimum) and the commute time from wherever you wind up in the city from NJ Transit/PATH to where you actually have to go.
So really, it varies widely depending on where you work. When I commuted from Metuchen to 8th Ave & 35th it was an incredibly easy commute and I could usually make it from my house to the desk in under an hour. But my office was pretty much RIGHT next to Penn Station, so that's pretty rare. If your work is near a PATH or a 1/2/3 or A/C/E stop you have it a bit easier, because you can jump right off a NJ Transit onto a subway. Unfortunately your office is only near the 6 line (east side line that would require 2 transfers) and the F & N trains (these run crosstown so they're the better options, but they include a bit of walking both from Penn and to your office.)
In addition to that, you need to keep in mind that things can and will go wrong. Trains will be delayed. Sometimes your train will arrive on time but it will crawl and stop constantly with no explanation and arrive 10-15 minutes late anyway. Sometimes "signal problems" or "a sick passenger" will happen and you'll have to get off your train and get onto a new one or take the PATH and figure out another way to get to your office. Sometimes the subways will be uncooperative. Sometimes they'll close off seemingly every exit in Penn Station and you'll have to wait in a giant gridlock to get out.
So, yes...it's not the breezy 35 minute commute that you've been promised, but all in all it's pretty doable as long as you have an understanding of mass transit. I would say, as someone who's done both, commuting from one of the boroughs is generally easier (though certainly not without its own problems). But NJ offers things that they can't so for many it's worth the extra headache.
Leave house in Wayne( northern part by rt. 23, basically farthest part of Wayne from the city) 7:20am
Board 7:46am train to Manhattan
arrive Penn Station 8:27ish
Arrive at office near 36th and 8th Ave 8:32-8:35
Total time door to desk: 1:15 (sometimes a little less)
All other times:
Leave house in Wayne( by rt. 23) 7:10am
Board 7:46am train to Manhattan
arrive Penn Station 8:27ish
Arrive at desk in office near 36th and 8th Ave 8:32-8:35am
Total Time door to desk: 1:25
On the return trip I leave my office at 6:00pm and I'm home like clockwork at 7:15.
It shows you how important where your office is to the actual total commute time. My house to my office is 25 miles, with no direct train but my commute time would be the same as someone whose office is on the east side or downtown and lives in South Orange or Maplewood which is much closer to the city, much more expensive for housing, and has direct train service.
when i used to commute to 14th and 8th from somerset it was about 90 minutes "door to door". i would leave my place in somerset and it took about 10 minutes to drive to the new brunswick station, then a 67 minute train ride, and another 10 minutes or so down 2 stops on the ACE line. that was best case...
I commute daily to NYC from Rahway. Here's my schedule:
Leave house at 6:35 am.
Arrive parking lot at 6:40 am.
At platform at 6:45 am
Train arrives at 6:50 am
Usually make it to Penn Station NY around 7:40ISH. I say "ISH" because stuff happens.
Walk to subway and make my way downtown on the 2/3. Get to work around 8:20 am.
This is if it all goes well but you can see I've already spent nearly 2 hours getting to my job.
If I take a later train, it gets worse the later it is in the morning. I used to take a 7:27 am but wasn't arriving until after 9:00am, which was too late. I decided leaving early was better for me overall. I'd rather be in the office too early then too late.
Going home is worse because there's nowhere to park your butt if you miss a train and, because it's always packed during rush hour. It's seriously exhausting. I leave work a bit early to try and catch the 5:52 pm to Rahway. I get there usually a little before 7pm - the train never seems to leave on time. Total time is similar to the morning; I leave my office around 5:20 pm so again, you're talking 1-3/4 hours at minimum.
Bad weather, broken down trains, Amtrak issues, etc. will add large chunks of time to your commute when they happen.
Unfortunately there just isn't any better, more economical way to get to work so I suck it up.
FYI - buses are just as bad; sitting outside the tunnel for an hour is no picnic.
Looks like any way you slice it, the commute into the city sucks. I've never worked in the city, but will start a new job there soon. Luckily for me it's right next to Port Authority. I don't know that I'd be able to handle a 2 hour commute daily. I'm pretty shocked to hear some of these commute times from people who live in a town with a train station.
my "favorite" part of the commute is waiting by those ****ty small tv screens waiting for my trains track number to appear since for some unknown F'in reason the same train doesn't leave from the same track everyday. then RUNNING, seriously always running, to get a seat in the train car i prefer. I'm seriously surprised there aren't more trampolings reported at that hell hole
I am within 2 blocks of the train station in Cranford so I don't have to worry about lights or parking and it still takes me 1 hour 15 minutes door to door....and I'm within walking distance of WTC too.
8 minute walk
20 minute train ride to Newark
Switch to PATH in Newark
20 minute PATH ride
10 minute walk to work
NJ transit sucks ..1:15 -1:30 on a good day to Midtown east is what you should expect . highly recommend living in the city or close on the PATH/NYC subway lines
Commuting into Manhattan sucks all around for everyone, and that's even including for some in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (I've had coworkers from all 3 who pissed & moaned about their subway lines on a daily basis and then just gave up and started driving in). I think the PATH train is faster and more efficient & reliable than a number of MTA subway lines.
But for NJ folks, something closer to 90 minutes is probably more the norm than the exception. The only people who have a true 30-minute commute are the ones that live next door to a PATH station in NJ, and then work right next to the WTC PATH station in NY (train ride of ~22 minutes, give or take, and that leaves 8 minutes wiggle room for walking to the train station, swiping your card, and waiting for the train to pull up).
Everyone else is looking at a MINIMUM of 1 hour, I don't care what any time table says. And if you work on the east side of Manhattan and/or something like in the 60s (i.e. 20-30+ blocks uptown from all the NJ transportation hubs in the city), you can count on adding an additional 30 minutes to your total commute time because you can't zip through hoards of commuters and tourists as fast as you'd like to, it takes time to get to a subway station, swipe your card, and get to the platform, and then after all that, you might not even be able to get on the first train that pulls up because the platform is 20 deep with people wanting to cram on. Either that, or you can opt for a half hour walk all the way cross town + uptown.
The NJ Transit train ride itself is the easy part...especially in this day and age when everyone's got a smart phone and/or a tablet to kill time. I used to use the time to draft emails, memos, slide decks, and organize my calendar and go over my to do lists for the office. When I wasn't in Type A mode, I would use the time to listen to the backlog of podcasts I've been meaning to listen to, or my catalog of iTunes, or watch/read stuff I'd downloaded to my tablet, or text or play games on my phone, or just nap and daydream. The ride itself, even if it's over an hour...it's almost fun. You can use the time to decompress, or just get a bunch of drudge work out of the way and over with.
What can make the commute stressful, and what makes it drag on, is the drive to the train station (red lights all the way; getting held up by school buses and garbage trucks; just all around local rush hour morning traffic); the parking; anything that results in train delays; and then possibly having to deal with additional commuting/subway drama within Manhattan itself.
This is just the nature of working in Manhattan, though. 1.5+ million commuters try to cram on to the island every day...an island that is a little more than 13 miles long and a little more than 2 miles wide. Actually, most of that 1.5+ million are cramming into only the lower half of the island (i.e., midtown and downtown), so we're really talking about 1.5+ million people cramming into an area of land that is more like 7.5 miles long and 2 miles wide. For reference, that's an area of land that is comparable to, say, a town like West Orange or Livingston. When you have that volume of people trying to cram their way onto that small an area of land, it's never going to be truly fast or easy.
But having said all that, there is nothing like working and being in the city. Don't get me wrong...I am glad to have a break from doing it right now, and having a NJ-only cake-walk of a commute. However, I also miss NYC sometimes, too. It's just a different energy there. The smells (yes, I said the smells), the sights, the sounds, the vast array of characters with whom you come into contact on any given day. It's never dull. I mean, no one's ever going to be filming a movie right outside my office park in NJ, kwim? No on in my NJ office has purple hair, and none of the admin people are actors and stand ups on the side. There are no buskers playing music in the parking lot or outside the QuickCheck.
And of course, there's always the NYC pay bump that makes it worth it.
Did the commute for 37 years minus the times we were relocated to J.C. after terrorist attacks/waiting for downtown to be rebuilt. Drove, took a bus, took trains from Bergen, Passaic, and Monmouth Counties. There's no easy way, and the under-an-hour commute is very rare.
But working in the city does have its upsides, as the above poster pointed out! 2002 -2011 I was at Madison and 23rd--lots of movies and TV shows shot in the park. Great food choices.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
