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The problem is parking at the train stations. Many have a waiting list with an average waiting time of several YEARS.
Very true. An important part of checking out any possible town with a train station is to find out what the parking or access situation is.
Ridgewood, for example, has very little parking space, but with your monthly rail ticket you can ride certain buses for free that stop at the station. When I caught the Ridgewood train, I had a six-minute bus ride from a neighboring town to the train.
Hawthorne has street parking available to residents who pay $2 per year for a sticker or non-residents who pay $600 per year.
The town where I now reside has $3-per-day parking available to anyone and the lot is not full.
The info is usually available on the town website or by calling the borough clerk or equivalent.
Midtown you can do it within an hour or so; downtown, forgetaboutit. All the towns clevedark and others mentioned would be good places to start looking ...
The Midtown commute is the best in New Jersey – the bus ride is short (5 to 15 minutes), a monthly pass is cheap ($78), and the buses run frequently. Station parking isn’t an issue because everyplace in Weehawken is within a couple blocks of a bus stop.
Door-to-door commutes from the Bergen and Essex towns suggested in this thread (except for Rutherford, maybe) take longer than an hour. I know because I commuted from the suburbs on the Midtown Direct train line for years, got sick of it, and moved to Weehawken because of the convenient commute.
The schools in Weehawken are good, not great. They are significantly better than schools in nearby towns such as Jersey City and Hoboken. The Weehawken elementary school (K-2) generates positive comments from parents I chat with, although tests scores aren’t published making evaluation more subjective. The middle school (3-6) test scores are in line with state average in language arts and above average in math. http://education.state.nj.us/rc/nclb08/reports/17/5580/17-5580-080.html NJ Monthly magazine ranks the high school (7-12) #119 out of 316 public high schools in the state. Several people have told me they’re more satisfied with the lower grades, and some parents send their children to private high schools in Hudson County (Hudson School, St. Peter’s) and Manhattan.
Weehawken has a mix of income levels but is middle class overall. Snobbery seems to be absent in Weehawken relative to the suburbs, making for a nicer community in my view.
Last edited by pretorius; 11-30-2009 at 12:01 PM..
Try Edison (40 mts to NYC) or Princeton/West Windsor (1 hr to NYC) - both have really good schools, are very safe and you can get certainly get a decent condo for under 650K.
Try Edison (40 mts to NYC) or Princeton/West Windsor (1 hr to NYC) - both have really good schools, are very safe and you can get certainly get a decent condo for under 650K.
Again, the problem is parking at the train station. The waiting list is several YEARS long. And it's MORE than an hour door-to-door.
Some of the suggestions would never get the OP to midtown or downtown in an hour. Yes, Wyckoff and Oakland are very nice, but I can not see you making it to Manhattan in an hour. Not during the best of times much less rush hour.
Other suggestions like Weehawken and Edgewater may be up and coming towns, but the schools really have not caught up to the yuppification that is taking place there. Since schools are what OP seems to be looking for, I don't know that they'd foot the bill.
While you will be geographically closer in Bergen County, it is true that some of the direct train service towns in Morris/Suburban Essex counties may actually provide smoother commutes. However, the infamous parking situations are mentioned here.
Rutherford is a nice bedroom community. It's still "city like" and has decent schools (I don't think they qualify as the BEST, if compared to say Tenafly) but all things considered a nice town with a train station right in town.
Think of what other amenities you'd like from the town. Do you want a close knit community, suburban or more urban feeling? Recreation facilities important? What about accessibility to major highways? Will you be commuting only or (welcome to NJ...) start driving more, even if not to work. If so, you may want a town that will also link you up to major highways.... more details can help us give a better recommendation to you.
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