02/17/08

Should you take taxis? Buses?  Subways? Walk?

Let's start with walking.  New York is a great walking city. It helps to know that in Manhattan, numbered streets (that's streets, not avenues) are 20 to the mile, so the distance between, for example, Macy's and Times Square (34th Street to 42nd Street) is 8 "street" blocks, or under half a mile. "Avenue" blocks - the blocks between avenues - are much longer, and can vary more than maps show.  And in Greenwich Village or downtown - any area that just grew, rather than was planned - all bets are off.  I'm lucky if I can even find my way!

In the boroughs it varies.  In Park Slope, a residential area of Brooklyn, it's like Manhattan, ordered, numbered streets and avenues, easy to figure out. In Queens it can be different, as Steve and I found out the hard way once.  (We walked miles!) In Astoria, a residential area of Queens that's one of the most interesting, multicultural neighborhoods in New York, 23rd Avenue and 24th Avenue are 4 blocks apart - in between are 23rd Road, 23rd Drive, and 23rd Terrace.  And, in at least one area, 19th Street, 21st Street, and 23rd Street are consecutive.  A little further south, 22nd Street appears, but 19th Street disappears.  In other words - take the bus!

Bus or subway? 

The decision factor tends to be time.  You can go a long way in a short time if you take the subway.  But you see the city if you take the bus, and it tends to be more comfortable.  (Except for the cellphone yellers.) Buses go up or down most avenues in Manhattan except Park Avenue, and across most two-way, i.e., main, streets.  These days you can switch from one to the other, and Metrocards take most of the pain out of transfers. 

Note:  If you don't want to buy a Metrocard, buses take exact change, but they do need change. No notes.  And passengers treat requests for change of a dollar with varying degrees of sympathy. If it's clear you're a visitor, no problem.  If they think you're a New Yorker who didn't bother to get change before taking the bus, they will suddenly become absorbed in their newspapers.

Bicycles

To most visitors, it seems that bicycles should be the solution to Manhattan's monumental traffic problems.  Everywhere else in the world, it seems, people ride bicycles, and most large European cities have wide bike paths. (I nearly got run down the first time I stepped out of the hotel in Vienna - my own fault, we'd been warned not to walk on the bike paths!) 

It's been tried in New York, and it just doesn't seem to work.  It's a bit of a vicious circle, actually - bicyclists, including those making deliveries, find it difficult to get through traffic, and tend to ignore traffic laws, cutting through intersections, going the wrong way on one-way streets, and even riding on sidewalks.  In turn, the drivers of cars, trucks and buses resent the bicyclists, and the hostility escalates.  There are some areas of the city where bicycles are popular, but they've never become a solution to the midtown traffic problems.

Every now and then, the police do a ticketing blitz to try to control them.  Now, when a delivery guy is ticketed, it's the restaurant who has to pay, which improves things somewhat.  No longer do poorly paid delivery guys have to choose between risking a ticket and risking losing a tip for prompt delivery (or being penalized for not getting there quickly).

I owned a bicycle at one point, but I found I was afraid to ride it, especially on Second Avenue, which is a main truck route.  Truck drivers yelled at me!  And I was a law-abiding rider! A few months later, I sold the bike to someone who lived in Queens.

One success is the new pedicabs, which have become popular with visitors and extremely unpopular with the drivers of the horsedrawn cabs, whose business they are cutting into.  Be warned, however, these pedicabs are unlicensed and often uninsured.  Would I get into one of those things - with just a flimsy canopy between me and the fast-moving cars?  Not on your life!

Taxis

Many years ago, before I came to New York, someone showed me a postcard of Times Square.  It was a sea of yellow - yellow cabs.  I was fascinated.  What kind of city is it where everybody goes by taxi instead of driving themselves?

Now, of course, I know that it is a luxury in New York to drive your own car, and to be able to afford to pay to park it - or have a driver.

Taxis come in useful, of course, and there are people who take them all the time.  (Not me.) Besides, the joke is that their "available" signs dissolve in the rain, when you need them most.

This site was last updated 02/22/07

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