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Okay, great. So we've established that you don't want to live in the city. Now, do you have any questions about specific suburbs in which you're interested? Contrary to what you may think, we'd be happy to help in that regard.
Not at the moment but thanks though. Its going to be another year before I can purchase anything, so I'm not going to be thinking about that too much for a while.
I really dont get how anyone in their right mind would try to work in Manhattan while living in Philly lol. The commute is long as ****. And if your making alot of money, you can live in Brooklyn or Queens just fine. People are more likely to consider NJ (even though NJ to me seemed kind of crappy) WAY before they think of traveling 1 1/2 to 2 hours (providing there are no delays) on average all the way to Manhattan. The distance is way too far for it to be practical. Even if Philly is cheaper, having to commute that far to work 5 days a week just isnt worth saving some money. Its just way too stressful having to travel that far on a daily basis to justify saving some money.
About six or seven years ago, I made the acquaintance of a fellow who (at the time) had a job in Manhattan but had bought a house on Elfreth's Alley. Keep in mind that on Amtrak, you can travel between Manhattan and Philadelphia in about an hour, slightly less than that on the premium-fare Acela. That's not a "long as f**k" commiute; there are New York-area residents who spend that long commuting on the regional rails. You can commute by bus — nonstop between the Port Authority and the Philadelphia bus terminals/pickup points — in 90 minutes assuming no serious traffic jams, and I knew a friend who did do that daily. Again, in some of those other hideously expensive cities, the people who "drive till they qualify" for a mortgage on a home they can afford have similarly long commutes. I will grant that most people don't want to spend that long commuting, but some who find themselves in certain circumstances do. Philadelphians seeking to break into the big time in the Big Apple, or New Yorkers who don't want to pay New York prices but want to keep their New York jobs, are among that number, at least for a while; most of them, I suspect, reconcile themselves when they (a) have saved up enough to afford the upfront on a New York apartment in the one case (b) find employment they like in Philadelphia in the other.
Now, the number of people who can afford to commute on Amtrak (which does offer a reduced-price monthly ticket) is small, but this guy made enough to do it, and he did, for a while, until he and his partner set up a design studio here in the city. He now works for our regional tourism promotion agency, Visit Philadelphia.
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Yeah I get that in city life that you dont need a car, but unless you plan on staying on that city forever, you need a car to travel to other places. Having a car also makes food shopping a hell of alot easier. I already own a car and dont really want to get rid of it. I dont mind driving in small doses and I own a fairly cheap car to where the cost of having it arent backbreaking.
You don't need to own a car to do any of that, and for many destinations, one can get there by means other than driving — I've just explained how one travels between NYC and Philadelphia without getting behind the wheel, and Amtrak, the regional rail services (SEPTA and New Jersey Transit, transferring in Trenton) and the buses put together probably account for a majority of travelers between the two cities.
The more I read statements like that from you, the more I think you have either no idea or insufficient appreciation of other means of getting around. If you don't want to get rid of your car, fine, but people have sold their cars and subscribed to car share in many cities because they don't want to deal with the fixed costs of owning or leasing when they don't need to drive all that much.
As for grocery shopping, I live by myself, own a granny cart, and can stop by either the supermarket near me, an Aldi that's on the subway line between Center City and the place where I catch the bus to my home, or the Reading Terminal Market in town to pick up a few things when I'm out and about. No hassle at all.
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And I dont see Philly becoming anything like DC or NYC if it got super gentrified since its on a different type of land mass. Philly is not a coastal city and has a **** ton of land to work with. The suburbs are HUGE and the city limits has a ton of run down sectors that arent being utilized. Its also not extremely difficult to get around the surrounding area due to no bridges or a ton of highways blocking everything.
That actually describes the DMV too. Your point was?
Oh living in Philly and working in Manhattan is ridiculous. The train ride might be an hour but unless you happen to live and work at the respective Amtrak stations, your commute is longer than that, and probably significantly so.
Oh living in Philly and working in Manhattan is ridiculous. The train ride might be an hour but unless you happen to live and work at the respective Amtrak stations, your commute is longer than that, and probably significantly so.
Yeah I was going to say since I took Septa to NJ Transit and that **** took me like 3 hours. And yeah, there was delays, but on a good day Id expect it to like take at least 2 hours, so per week thats 20 hours just by traveling.
Oh living in Philly and working in Manhattan is ridiculous. The train ride might be an hour but unless you happen to live and work at the respective Amtrak stations, your commute is longer than that, and probably significantly so.
If you work in the main office district (Midtown Manhattan) and live in Center City, the additional commute on rapid transit probably adds 30 minutes total to the trip. That does push it over the 90-minute threshold, though.
But I did acknowledge that most people don't want to spend that much time commuting. Those who can make the trip an extension of the workday/workspace may tolerate it at best. But that doesn't mean no one does it. The Inky ran a story in the 1990s on the small but convivial band of Amtrak commuters who made this trek daily. Then there are those precious few who make enough that they could maintain a pied-à-terre in Manhattan and commute from Philly to NYC on Monday, then return to Philly on Friday. Those people must really like living here.
Yeah I was going to say since I took Septa to NJ Transit and that **** took me like 3 hours. And yeah, there was delays, but on a good day Id expect it to like take at least 2 hours, so per week thats 20 hours just by traveling.
Chances are that the people who commute between Philly and Manhattan on public transportation and can't afford Amtrak take the buses instead because they get there 30 minutes faster except at the peak commute hours.
Spending two hours plus on two trains between the two cities is more than even the hardiest commuter can bear. Most of the people I know who take the regional trains between the two cities are leisure travelers on a budget.
About six or seven years ago, I made the acquaintance of a fellow who (at the time) had a job in Manhattan but had bought a house on Elfreth's Alley. Keep in mind that on Amtrak, you can travel between Manhattan and Philadelphia in about an hour, slightly less than that on the premium-fare Acela. That's not a "long as f**k" commiute; there are New York-area residents who spend that long commuting on the regional rails. You can commute by bus — nonstop between the Port Authority and the Philadelphia bus terminals/pickup points — in 90 minutes assuming no serious traffic jams, and I knew a friend who did do that daily. Again, in some of those other hideously expensive cities, the people who "drive till they qualify" for a mortgage on a home they can afford have similarly long commutes. I will grant that most people don't want to spend that long commuting, but some who find themselves in certain circumstances do. Philadelphians seeking to break into the big time in the Big Apple, or New Yorkers who don't want to pay New York prices but want to keep their New York jobs, are among that number, at least for a while; most of them, I suspect, reconcile themselves when they (a) have saved up enough to afford the upfront on a New York apartment in the one case (b) find employment they like in Philadelphia in the other.
Now, the number of people who can afford to commute on Amtrak (which does offer a reduced-price monthly ticket) is small, but this guy made enough to do it, and he did, for a while, until he and his partner set up a design studio here in the city. He now works for our regional tourism promotion agency, Visit Philadelphia.
You don't need to own a car to do any of that, and for many destinations, one can get there by means other than driving — I've just explained how one travels between NYC and Philadelphia without getting behind the wheel, and Amtrak, the regional rail services (SEPTA and New Jersey Transit, transferring in Trenton) and the buses put together probably account for a majority of travelers between the two cities.
The more I read statements like that from you, the more I think you have either no idea or insufficient appreciation of other means of getting around. If you don't want to get rid of your car, fine, but people have sold their cars and subscribed to car share in many cities because they don't want to deal with the fixed costs of owning or leasing when they don't need to drive all that much.
As for grocery shopping, I live by myself, own a granny cart, and can stop by either the supermarket near me, an Aldi that's on the subway line between Center City and the place where I catch the bus to my home, or the Reading Terminal Market in town to pick up a few things when I'm out and about. No hassle at all.
That actually describes the DMV too. Your point was?
The DMV area is closer to the water and there is a **** ton of highways all going through it. You dont have as many highways going through Philly. My point is that even if Philly was gentrified, it wouldnt shoot up the COL so easily. Especially when there is not a ton of 6 figure jobs in the area. The reason DC and NYC are so expensive is because people making 100-200k a year is not uncommon. When people are only making 50-70k in Philly, you cant command higher rents.
And I dont see how you can do alot of food shopping without a car. You can only carry so much groceries. And alot of bigger stores cannot set up shop in city centers that easy. I dunno about you, but I dont wanna waste my life away at the store all the time. Id like the food shop once for the week and go about my life. You cant buy a ton of food if you have to carry it all.
Even 90 minutes per day is a long commute. Thats 3 hours per day just traveling. Its kind of unreasonable to think that is practical for most people. And at the end of the day, time is money. The 3 hours spent traveling is money wasted. And that also doesnt include the time it takes to walk to wherever they work. I dont think it makes sense for most people to do that unless their job doesnt pay that well, which if that is case, they probably need a new job or to leave the area for something different.
The DMV area is closer to the water and there is a **** ton of highways all going through it. You dont have as many highways going through Philly. My point is that even if Philly was gentrified, it wouldnt shoot up the COL so easily. Especially when there is not a ton of 6 figure jobs in the area. The reason DC and NYC are so expensive is because people making 100-200k a year is not uncommon. When people are only making 50-70k in Philly, you cant command higher rents.
And I dont see how you can do alot of food shopping without a car. You can only carry so much groceries. And alot of bigger stores cannot set up shop in city centers that easy. I dunno about you, but I dont wanna waste my life away at the store all the time. Id like the food shop once for the week and go about my life. You cant buy a ton of food if you have to carry it all.
How much food does one person need to eat for a week? Even when I was shopping for two, I found I could fit groceries for a week into a large granny cart.
The supermarket three blocks from me has about 30,000 square feet of interior space. Giant (of Carlisle, Pa.) just opened a new supermarket about twice that size on the second floor of a new apartment tower on the east bank of the Schuylkill in Center City. Pier 70 on the Delaware riverfront had a 70,000-square-footer, and after it closed, Walmart added about 40,000 square feet of supermarket to its store on the other side of the center.
And the fastest-growing supermarket chain in the country is the deep-discount, no-frills Aldi chain. Its stores are about half the size of the supermarket near me — about the size of a typical supermarket prior to the 1970s — and can fit into many urban spaces. Like Wegmans, Aldi tends to have fans rather than customers (I'm one).
It may not be as easy to open a ginormous supermarket in a city, but where there's a will, there's a way. Many brownfield sites (like the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Pier 70) have the acreage. And they tend to be served by public transit, or if they aren't, the local transit authority will reroute one or more bus lines to serve them once they're converted.
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Even 90 minutes per day is a long commute. Thats 3 hours per day just traveling. Its kind of unreasonable to think that is practical for most people. And at the end of the day, time is money. The 3 hours spent traveling is money wasted. And that also doesnt include the time it takes to walk to wherever they work. I dont think it makes sense for most people to do that unless their job doesnt pay that well, which if that is case, they probably need a new job or to leave the area for something different.
I really don't disagree with what you say here — the overwhelming majority of people try to keep their commutes to 30 minutes tops. But where did I say it was practical? All I said was that it was possible, and that there were a non-trivial number of people who did it. I feel for the drive-till-you-qualify crowd, especially since many of them provide those basic services that make the superstar cities tick. But those whose commutes take place on a bus or train may not be wasting those three hours if they take a laptop (or book) with them and can do work (or reading) on board.
How much food does one person need to eat for a week? Even when I was shopping for two, I found I could fit groceries for a week into a large granny cart.
The supermarket three blocks from me has about 30,000 square feet of interior space. Giant (of Carlisle, Pa.) just opened a new supermarket about twice that size on the second floor of a new apartment tower on the east bank of the Schuylkill in Center City. Pier 70 on the Delaware riverfront had a 70,000-square-footer, and after it closed, Walmart added about 40,000 square feet of supermarket to its store on the other side of the center.
And the fastest-growing supermarket chain in the country is the deep-discount, no-frills Aldi chain. Its stores are about half the size of the supermarket near me — about the size of a typical supermarket prior to the 1970s — and can fit into many urban spaces. Like Wegmans, Aldi tends to have fans rather than customers (I'm one).
It may not be as easy to open a ginormous supermarket in a city, but where there's a will, there's a way. Many brownfield sites (like the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Pier 70) have the acreage. And they tend to be served by public transit, or if they aren't, the local transit authority will reroute one or more bus lines to serve them once they're converted.
I really don't disagree with what you say here — the overwhelming majority of people try to keep their commutes to 30 minutes tops. But where did I say it was practical? All I said was that it was possible, and that there were a non-trivial number of people who did it. I feel for the drive-till-you-qualify crowd, especially since many of them provide those basic services that make the superstar cities tick. But those whose commutes take place on a bus or train may not be wasting those three hours if they take a laptop (or book) with them and can do work (or reading) on board.
Yeah I mean, im not saying your wrong in that you can hypothetically commute from Philly to NYC for a job. Im saying that it kind of sucks and if your making a butt load of money, your better off living in one of the cheaper boroughs instead.
If your not making a ton of money, then you probably have no business being in NYC and should get a job somewhere else. It seems like its more stress than its worth to be traveling so crazy like that just to own a home in Philly. Yes, Philly homes are alot cheaper compared to Queens & Brooklyn homes, but if your spending 20-30 a week traveling just to have it, then it might not really be worth it.
I think it was NW Philly but I do remember seeing bared up windows lol, which to me is not a very good sign for a good neighborhood. ...... NE Philly was like a 3rd world country. NW Philly seemed somewhat safe and sorta liveable, but just too congested for my taste.
Where to begin....
1) NE Philly is NOT like a 3 world country. Not even close.
2) Philly is such a city of neighborhoods, that we really would need you to be:
a) sure of where you were, and...
b) provide addresses or landmarks....as neighborhoods near each other can be vastly different from each other.
So without very good locators we really can't even discuss this broad a topic or address your thoughts -- about the city anyway -- with any kind of intelligence or meaningful comments.
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