I wrote this some time ago, but forgot to post it. I’ll be heading back there tomorrow, so this timely once again!

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As many of my friends know, I am an aficionado of public transportation. Especially rail, but really any sort of mass transit system. During my recent visit to New York City, with one of the better mass transit systems available in the U.S., we needed to get from the upper East Side (say, Madison Ave and about 80th St.) to a residence in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

All sorts of consternation broke out in my family. Riverdale, they made sure I understood, was some sort of island, an oasis where public transit was impossible to navigate. I asked where the nearest subway station would be–after all, I have walked the Bronx from river to river, how far could it be? No, impossible they said. What about buses? Too much trouble, they don’t exist, heaven only knows.

I have to admit, with all this sturm und drang, my thoughts did turn to simply calling a cab or even Uber. But I finally succumbed to the suggestion that we make the journey via the Metro North system. This is did have the advantage of being a commuter railroad I had never traveled and much of the journey would be above ground near enough to the Harlem River to enjoy a spectacular view all the way to Spuyten Duyvil. So don’t get me wrong, I was pretty happy with this solution.

To get to Metro North we wound up taking the subway to Grand Central. My eyebrows did get a bit of a rise when I saw the fare on Metro North. The distance we were traversing was nothing unusual for mass transit–it would have been a single fare on the subway. But even with a senior rate, we were charged about 3x what the subway costs. And of course, since we had to pay the subway fare anyway, the whole Metro North fare was on top of that. No, it wasn’t an economic hardship for us, especially since it was just the one trip. But I feel for the many who have to pay that fare each way for a work week. I suppose there are probably bulk and discount programs. Anyway, all things considered it was a fun for me and not horrible for Terri. A member of the family picked us up at the Spuyten Duyvil stop for another mile or two journey to our destination.

But all this made me curious. Just how difficult is it really to get somewhere via regular NYC mass transit? For years people told me that it was impossible to get to or from any of the NYC airports and I figured out that that was BS–it’s perfectly easy to do as long as you aren’t burned by multiple suitcases, and can be accomplished with a single fare.

In my years as a foot messenger (the name is a bit strange since we always traveled by subway or bus unless the distance was very short) it was a matter of deep pride to be one who could figure out the most efficient route for delivering a package. These days, services like Google have taken a lot of the skill out of this process. I know I should have taken the two minutes it would have taken to figure out how to do the trip via regular transit. But I didn’t want conflict, and making my ever-suffering spouse ride along on my adventure didn’t seem the right way to go. So I followed the family orders. But there is that nagging sense–what else could I have done?

Back home in Tennessee I decided to look at the mass transit options. So here’s what else we could have done. The place we were eating lunch was exactly one block from a regular city bus stop where two different Bronx bound buses stop. We could have boarded either the BxM1 or the BxM2. Either bus would have taken us to a stop exactly 1 block from my family’s home. Google estimates the total time for the trip at 1 hour, including the walks to the bus and from the bus to the house. Each of the buses runs approximately every 15 minutes on Sundays, so our wait would have been no more than that. Obviously, NYC traffic is always an issue, but as I said, this was a Sunday, so not so bad. One fare, one hour. And life goes on…