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What it's like to voluntarily go carless as a way of life in Boulder, Colorado.

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New York: Trains rule

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Contributed by: Amy Gahran on 3/25/2007

I spent the last few days in New York City, where I was speaking at the BlogHer Business Summit conference. People in the NYC area love to complain about trains and train stations, but I've gotta tell ya, I was impressed. You can get just about anywhere by train in New York -- which, in my opinion, is soooooo much better than fighting traffic in the city streets.

Here's a quick rundown of my NYC area transit experience:

First, I flew into Newark (NJ) airport. From there, I caught a bus ($14) to Grand Central Terminal in NYC. From there, I took the Hudson Line train to Tarrytown, NY ($15), where I spent a couple of days with my colleague Adam Glenn and his family. So, $29 to travel 43 miles through NYC during rush hour, and I didn't feel like I was fighting with anything.

The next day, to get to an event at Columbia University, I took the Hudson Line from Tarrytown to Marble Hill to connect with the #1 subway line. It was a nice walk from Adam's house to the train station. The ticket window at Tarrytown station was closed, and I couldn't find the ticket machine, so I paid $9 to buy a ticket on the train from the conductor. That trip turned out to be a little bit of an adventure (will describe that in another post), but not a problem. The subway to Columbia was $2. So: $11 to get into a city without a car.

Adam and I took a combination of cabs and the Hudson Line train home after the Columbia event. That was more expensive, probably about $15 apiece. Still, I thought, better than dealing with driving & paying for parking in NY.

Finally, I took the Hudson line into the city to go to the conference: $10, plus a $7 cab ride from Grand Central to the hotel with my bags. After the conference, I walked my bags one block down to Penn Station to catch Amtrack to PA to visit friends and family: $62

That's a hell of a lot of getting around without the expense and hassle of renting a car and driving in NYC!

It makes me wish we'd have good regional light rail throughout the Denver metro area sooner rather than later. Buses are fine, but trains would make more sense for things like getting to different parts of Denver than downtown, or getting from Boulder to Longmont, etc. The tracks are there; we just need the will to make this happen, I think.

Transit Village isn't a perfect plan, but it's at least heading in the right direction.

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Submitted By: Laura Mayo

posted on 4/24/2007 @ 3:58:44 PM

Rated Blog Entry

This place has a charming feel to it.

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Amy Gahran

Boulder , CO

Amy Gahran has posted 60 blog entries and 39 comments since joining on 11/30/2005. Amy Gahran 's average blog rating is 4.99.

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