Commute to Philadelphia?

[russian-jewish-new-yorker]

the cheapest easiest way is nj transit or amtrak from union station to penn station.

Nonsense! First of all, there's no "Union Station" in Philly. The major passenger station is known as the "30th Street Station". Secondly, Amtrak is probably the fastest way to get between the cities, but certainly not the cheapest. Chinatown buses (and, perhaps, MegaBus or BoltBus as well) are the cheapset, but, of course, they are prone to traffic congestion. My best advise would be commuter trains, that is, the combination of NJ Transit and SEPTA (they connect in Trenton). That's because, on one hand, trains are generally more reliable than buses (at least withinthe Northeast corridor), and, on the other hand, commuter trains (i.e. NJT+SEPTA) are cheap enough (compared to faster Amtrak trains that are more suitable for time-sensiive business travel).

[itshim]

Originally Posted by Young Herman

When I go to NYC I take the Chinatown Bus, it takes you from Center City Philadelphia to Chinatown in Manhattan non stop. Round trip is $20 and it takes about 2 hours. The people on the bus aren't usually the creme de la creme of society, but I'm not marrying or living with them, just a bus ride. The other good thing is the bus runs every half hour 7am to 11pm I think.

I've done the commute for about a year back in 2005-2006 and after navigating different ways balancing both my time and cost, this is pretty much the easiest and cheapest way.

For the OP I would NOT recommend doing it unless you absolutely had to. It's probably cheaper and easier on your sanity to just rent a very cheap room in NYC. Door to door your commute will roughly be about 3-4 hours each way depending on what parts of the city you are coming and going from.

Here's a quick run down of how I use to do it...

I use to get up at 5am catch the 6am bus...get to Manhattan by 8-830 (depending on traffic) and arrive at work barely on time by 9 by subway.

That's beginning to end from 5am-9pm (4 hours)...and work was just beginning.

If I left work at 5pm, I was normally able to catch the 5:30 bus...BUT the traffic going out of the Holland TUnnel was normally 30 minutes to an hour due to rush hour (sometimes longer, sometimes shorter) THEN you still have the 2 hour commute which means that I was getting to my car roughly 8pm-830pm. By then it was ANOTHER 3-4 hour commute.

(6-8 hours in total per day or anywhere from 30-40 hours per week just commuting. It is extremely tiring an a feat an Iron Man competitor would scoff at. )

Now...

I normally arrived home in just enough time to eat dinner, shower have my own time for about 2 hours before I went to bed at about 10pm so that I could get up at 5 am again and start all over again.

Now it's ok if you get a routine down but there will be bad commuting days and good days. But it WILL wear on you.

Once a week is fine, 2 maybe...anything more than that and you are asking for it.

[mayorofnyc]

Commuting by bus is cheaper but commuting by train is much more convenient. The only way you could make a coach bus commute work is if you lived in Philly proper and worked in Midtown where you would have quick access to the bus terminals. Otherwise if you have to drive in to take a bus...then you'd be better off just riding the trains into NYC. Also with the coach bus...you'd be subject to traffic jams on the Turnpike nonstop assuming you're commuting at rush hour. My vote goes to the train.

[HandleX]

i would think that the train would be the easiest IMO but then again i only traveled from 30th street in philly to nyc on the occassion.