Why It's So Hard to Get From Brooklyn to Queens

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/05/very-brief-history-why-its-so-hard-get-brooklyn-queens/5738

by merraksh • 13 years ago

166 109 13 years ago

m.theatlanticcities.com

compare• 13 years ago

You really can't overstate the differences between trams and busses. Trams are more like a moving sidewalk, a physical part of the city.

barking• 13 years ago

Don't you mean 'can't overstate'?

keithpeter• 13 years ago

Several cities in UK are bringing trams back.

They call them 'the metro' usually to sound more modern.

I use one twice a week, but it only runs on actual roads for a small part of the journey (Birmingham to Wolverhampton) so it is more of a light railway really. The extension at the Birmingham end will bring the trams back onto main city streets.

mhb• 13 years ago

The incidence of that mistake seems to be increasing. It's the new "could care less".

brudgers• 13 years ago

The meaningful difference is not between rails and tires. It is between dedicated rights-of-way and one shared with automotive traffic.

When buses get dedicated right-of-way, as in Curitiba they provide similar service levels to subways.

vidarh• 13 years ago

A lot of tram systems don't have dedicated rights-of-way.

lstamour2• 13 years ago

Actually, I'd say it really comes down to rails and tires. Streetcars can be given the same rights-of-way as buses and would perform similarly, except: the streetcar is a smoother ride. I can grab breakfast and eat it on a streetcar knowing there's only one direction of motion to worry about. On a bus, however, you can never tell which way you'll be jerked around. It really is much less pleasant, even if it's faster without the right of way. (Due to left turning cars)

grandalf• 13 years ago

For comparison, a taxi or Uber between Queens and Brooklyn will run $40-$50 each way.

Taking the F train through Manhattan takes over an hour.

ubernostrum• 13 years ago

Though I've never personally experienced it, perhaps due to following the advice, I've been repeatedly advised when trying to get around NYC to always get in the taxi before telling them my destination is in Brooklyn.

This could be wrong, but the stated reason is that drivers don't want fares to Brooklyn (typically lower, and harder to get another fare who wants to go Brooklyn to someplace else for the return trip), and so will refuse the fare if told the destination before you get in the taxi (and apparently they're not allowed to refuse you based on destination once you're inside).

skorgu2• 13 years ago

That's good advice. If I'm not in a super huge rush I'll ask the first cab if he wants to go to Queens/Brooklyn/wherever before getting in. It has a ~80% failure rate.

They're not allowed to refuse a destination in the 5 boroughs full stop but if you're not inside the cost of refusing is trivial (just driving away).

apaprocki3• 13 years ago

A taxi refusing a fare at all (inside or outside) is against TLC rules and the driver will be fined / have their license suspended if you report them.

decktech• 13 years ago

This is good advice, but it's never worked for me. I've never hailed a cab in which they didn't have the doors locked until you tell them where you want to go. I even had one cab speed off while I was still holding the door handle when I told him I just wanted to go five blocks south (in Chelsea, in the snow), I figured he though I was going to change my mind when I got in.

I don't take cabs anymore.

steveklabnik• 13 years ago

Don't "look too Brooklyn," it's certainly a thing.

bradleyjg5• 13 years ago

That's not much of an issue if you are going between Brooklyn and Queens. With a few small exceptions you won't see a yellow cab in those boros anyway and black cars or the new green taxis are a lot more flexible.

kevination2• 13 years ago

Queens and Brooklyn are both enormous and border each other, so that price depends on where you're traveling to/from. e.g. a car from Bushwick, Brooklyn to Ridgewood, Queens might cost you $10. Also, taking the J train from Crescent St (Brooklyn) to Woodhaven Blvd (Queens) would be 5-10 minutes on the train.

temuze• 13 years ago

Thank you for saying this. I live in Long Island City, Queens and I visit friends in Williamsburg, Brooklyn all the time. It's easy to take the G train and get there within 20 some minutes.

billyto• 13 years ago

How to fix it: - Improve G train service. - Use the Pulaski bridge. - Take care of the BQE infrastructure. - Public jetpacks!

betterunix4• 13 years ago

Another possibility would be to build all the planned subway extensions in Queens; Brooklyn already has good subway service, and a few more lines connecting the two boroughs would not hurt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IND_Second_System

While we are at it, let's actually make use of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockaway_Beach_Branch

fennecfoxen3• 13 years ago

Build it? With whose money? The city's finances have been a disaster since 2008 and they've only been scraping by with a series of unsustainable tricks. The next mayor will almost certainly be Bill de Blasio, whose top agenda item is basically to spending a lot more money on the city's unionized labor. (His next agenda item is to revive rent control, because the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act apparently hasn't done enough to run the city into the ground yet. (And yes, that war emergency is WWII.))

Have you ever wondered why we can't have nice things? :P

apaprocki3• 13 years ago

Did they forget about the G train?? <ducks>

betterunix4• 13 years ago

When I was a kid, that might have worked -- the G stopped at Queens Plaza (with local service all the way to Continental Ave.), so you could take an E or F down Queens Boulevard, make a quick transfer, and be on your way. Sadly, the MTA seems to have it in for the G; the line now terminates at Court Sq., the trains are shorter than before (which was already shorter than other lines), and some of the stations are in very poor shape.

Also worth mentioning is the J, which is mostly a Brooklyn/Queens train.

apaprocki3• 13 years ago

They're trying to change things around. The G has been getting attention lately due to the population explosion in Williamsburg/Greenpoint. You'll have to ask someone that rides it every day, though. The J connects, but through Manhattan. Another mention is the East River Ferry which connects Dumbo, Williamsburg, Greenpoint and LIC. Still a far cry from connecting the rest of the boroughs, though.

bradleyjg5• 13 years ago

The J barely goes into Queens, only at the very end does it have half a dozen stops in Woodhaven and Jamaica. Someone below mentions the L which as far as I know has no Queens stops, and the the M which does actually serve Middle village directly from Brooklyn but otherwise requires a giant loop through Manhattan.

This issue is near and dear to my heart, I live in Woodside but I have close friends in Park Slope. By car it's a straight shot down the BQE -- 20 - 30 minutes depending on traffic. When all the subways are running, I can take the 7 to the G and it's an hour and fifteen minute trip. But both the 7 and the G have terrible weekend schedules so if I wanted to go right now, I'd have to take the 7 to the Q and go through all of Manhattan and it'd take more like an hour and a half. Or I could take three buses and hope that scheduled connections actually happen.

If the timing works out it can sometimes make sense to take commuter rail from Woodside-Jamaica-Atlantic Terminal though that's more expensive and you have to buy a ticket at the counter because the machines can't figure it out.

As an interim measure they should put a couple of express buses going north south -- one could go from the 74th Jackson Heights station down the BQE to the Lorimer stop on the L and then continue on to the Atlantic Terminal. Another could link the Middle village terminus of the M to the M (and R, F, E) at Queens Blvd with a second stop along the 7. The long term solution is more lines. We should be doing that instead of spending billions on silly prestige projects like the new Penn Station they want to build.

kevination2• 13 years ago

The L, J and M trains also connect Brooklyn and Queens.

skorgu2• 13 years ago

I took the G 4 miles. It took 47 minutes. I am not exaggerating those numbers for comedic effect.

seiji4• 13 years ago

I've had relationships fall apart because of the four mile G problem. To round it up, Court Square to the Park Slope areas is easily an hour when waiting for trains to arrive. Two hours round trip is why I left the Bay Area transit wasteland for cripessake.

billmalarky• 13 years ago

Checking in to say that I rode the G once from park slope to Williamsburg for a "quick dinner." The ride took over an hour each way. That's when I decided to never ride it again.

jamestnz• 13 years ago

Not really related, but your comment reminds me of a fantastic exchange from a Seinfeld ep, with Kramer advising Jerry on how to get to Coney Island.

Kramer: Ok, you can take the B or the F and switch for the N at Broadway Lafayette, or you can go over the bridge to DeKalb and catch the Q to Atlantic Avenue, then switch to the IRT 2, 3, 4 or 5.

But don't get on the G. See, that's very tempting, but you'll wind up on Smith and 9th, then you've got to get on the R.

Elaine: ... Couldn't he just take the D straight to Coney Island?

Kramer: Well. Yeah.

jzwinck• 13 years ago

Also in the category of boroughs hard to reach from Brooklyn without a car or undue delay: Staten Island. Today, three of its four bridges prohibit pedestrians and none have subway connections. One of those bridges (to NJ) used to have a pedestrian and cycle way, but a few years after the Streetcar Scandal it was removed as part of an expansion (!) orchestrated by Robert Moses. Look him up to find out more about the bizarre history of mass transit in mid-20th century NYC.

jrockway4• 13 years ago

The history isn't that bizarre. Robert Moses simply despised anyone that wasn't rich, and spent his entire career trying to make the city even more miserable than it already was for the poor. If you're rich, you don't bike to Staten Island, plain and simple -- you drive a glorious automocar.

It's ironic because now all the rich people want to bury his highways underground.

RickHull• 13 years ago

The history isn't that bizarre. Robert Moses simply despised anyone that wasn't rich, and spent his entire career trying to make the city even more miserable than it already was for the poor.

Robert Moses is a great example of the problems of unchecked power and hubris, even if ostensibly well-intentioned. But he absolutely democratized Long Island, which was an idyllic enclave of gigantic estates and private beaches before he built the LIE, Northern and Southern State Parkways, Jones Beach, etc.

He pissed off a lot of rich people in doing this.

paulgb• 13 years ago

There's an interesting follow-up article which attempts to debunk the "Great American Streetcar Scandal"

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/06/be-careful-ho...

bgruber• 13 years ago

As a Queens native, I'm much more inclined to think that the reason Greenwald hints at the end of the article ("As white flight and urban decline escalated in the late 1960s, Queens identified more and more with Long Island, isolating Brooklyn further still.") was to blame. Though one side of my family didn't completely leave Brooklyn until the early 70s, the other side actually got out in the early 50s. This is probably related to the parts of Brooklyn they lived in.

That said, the changes in transit almost definitely had an impact, and i would guess that the two phenomena had a sympathetic effect on each other.

hristov• 13 years ago

I do not buy that all. They say that streetcars were on their way out anyway because buses were more efficient. There is a significant hole in this reasoning because:

(a) GM is not in the business of owning street car lines; (b) GM spent considerable money to buy out the street car lines, nevertheless.

If the street car lines were on their way out anyways why did GM spend so much money on something very much out of their usual line business? It may not be true that GM was the sole reason streetcars went away there may have been other factors, but it is hard to deny that GM played a role and a very significant role as they were the party that did the actual physical destruction.

And, by the way, the only reason buses seemed cheaper at the time was subsidies. Street cars had to pay for the building and upkeep of their rails, while buses used the streets, and the city paid for upkeep of the streets. One usually does not consider the damage buses do on the streets, but it is pretty significant because heavy vehicles do disproportionate amount of damage to asphalt. When all costs are added up, light rail is usually much more efficient than buses and that is before you even consider environmental costs.

It is quite possible that as citizens started worrying over their tax bills they would require bus companies to pay for the use of city streets. Interstate truckers, for example, are taxed for use of the highways. In that case, street cars would again become cheaper to operate than buses.

gpvos• 13 years ago

I haven't read that article yet, but in Western Europe (at least the Netherlands), streetcars (and regional trams and trains) were in decline in the same period, although the larger cities kept them. But you may be right that it was actually implicit subsidies that made the difference.

MaggieL• 13 years ago

The same is true in the Philadelphia metro area...getting from one suburb to another via public transit is excruciating.

rquantz• 13 years ago

Except Brooklyn and Queens are not the suburbs.

mbubb2• 13 years ago

Heh - I used to live in Greenpoint and would reverse commute up to Queens Plaza to avoid the "G to the L to the BDFQ" into midtown...

On the contrary, Hoboken - where I now live - has a wealth of options to commute into both midtown and downtown NYC. Within a few blocks of my apartment: a subway trip of less than 20 mins to either Wall Street or 32nd (Midtown); ferry (a very pleasant 40 min trip to my office in the 40s); bus about 30 mins to midtown depending upon traffic. I love the ferry - it is the least efficient and most expensive option. I take it about 30% of the time to enjoy the river in the morning or evening.

This kind of access to NYC has made Hoboken (and downtown Jersey City) a much more desirable location than other small cities in the area. And I have more options than many of my colleagues in Brooklyn or Queens - and a quicker commute than some colleagues in the Upper West side of Manhattan.

Go a few miles further into NJ and commuting becomes a mess. The first time I googlemapped our new datacenter in the Meadowlands of NJ - I was pleasantly surprised that it was ~5 miles from NYC office and roughly the same from my Hoboken apartment. And ~1 mile from a transit stop.

Thought I could ride my bike but the trip is through MadMax NJ wasteland, unmaintained roads on which semis rule and on which there are no sidewalks. I am not brave enough. Even the wildlife is scary - a giant groundhog grumpily rules the front gate area of the datacenter. And those 8 foot tall reeds are everywhere - I can just imagine full of rats and albino sewer alligators of immense size. I take a $15 cab from the nearest light rail stop.

T-hawk• 13 years ago

Same here, I live on the Jersey City waterfront and love the ferry commute. Hoboken and Jersey City are excellent places to live for a Manhattan job. We get to take advantage of the market inefficiency created by the "eww Jersey" popular image. Bonus, we dodge the NYC income tax which runs over 3% of income.

algebr• 13 years ago

When are we having a hacker news JC readers meet up?

seiji4• 13 years ago

Fun fact: the NY state + NY city income taxes pretty much equal the entire California state income tax rate. It's not a huge loss given comparable living options.

samspenc• 13 years ago

I live in the NJ Path area as well (JC/Hoboken) ... but I personally do NOT think that this area is inexpensive ... definitely less expensive than Manhattan, and less taxes ... but you can find some awesome apartments in Queens/Brooklyn that would cost a fortune in JC/Hoboken.

bradleyjg5• 13 years ago

Hoboken to midtown or downtown is fine. But to the point of this article, Hoboken to Brooklyn or Queens is a long two transit systems ride.

Too bad really because Hoboken and JC and e.g. Boruem Hill or Astoria have a lot in common.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

I used to live in Greenpoint and would reverse commute up to Queens Plaza to avoid the "G to the L to the BDFQ" into midtown...

I used to live in Greenpoint too! I lived close to the Bedford Ave station. From there, it only took 10 minutes (5 stops on the L) to get to the 14 St station.

I guess you lived closer to the Greenpoint Ave station?

mbubb2• 13 years ago

Yup, Kent Street about a block from the water. I was there 1991-1993. And I was misremembering the subway routine - it was to go up to Queens Plaza to hit the N/R back to Manhattan.

evanb• 13 years ago

There's an excellent podcast episode of 99% Invisible which discusses the analogous thing that happened to the Red Car in Los Angeles.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-r...

mixmastamyk2• 13 years ago

This story is one of the big reasons LA (despite the weather) is not a great place to live. It has been unwalkable with a few exceptions. Though public transit is being slowly rebuilt from destruction, talk to most Angelenos and they don't even know there is a subway, much less use it.

Also, there is a certain segment of the population that fights denser development that would encourage transit improvements. I don't really understand why such a person would live in Hollywood, for example.

tzs2• 13 years ago

Also, there is a certain segment of the population that fights denser development that would encourage transit improvements. I don't really understand why such a person would live in Hollywood, for example.

Walkscore.com gives Hollywood a Walk Score of 97, which is described as a "Walker's Paradise" which means that daily errands do not require a car, or it gives it an 87, which means most daily errands do not require a car. (It gives different scores depending on how you search for it--I think the 97 is if it centers the map on Santa Monica Boulevard, and the 87 if it centers it farther north).

So maybe you find people living in Hollywood who are not worried about transit improvements because their neighborhood is fine without transit?

paganel• 13 years ago

As a tramway lover that photo of stacked, decommissioned streetcars made me cry a little on the inside. Just a couple of hours ago, as I was preparing to enter a tramway in my (East-European) city, I saw a 4-year old pointing to the two tramways that were waiting in the station and telling his grandma how great that was. Streetcars (and trains) are just magical.

jerryhuang100• 13 years ago

There are actually some "Chinatown-to-Chinatown" shuttles from the eighth ave in Brooklyn to Flushing, Queens in thirty minutes or so for two-fifty.

sethbannon• 13 years ago

There is a delightful movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which the villain is attempting just this: buying trolley lines to build "highways, as far as the eye can see".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

bobbyi_settv• 13 years ago

I'll also note that the (excellent) film was based on the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Censored_Roger_Rabbit%3F , but the streetcar/ highway plot elements are invented for the movie completely absent in the book.

monkeyspaw• 13 years ago

I second the recommendation for anyone who hasn't seen this movie. It was marketed as a kids movie, but has a lot of stuff in it that adults can appreciate.

It was also one of the first movies to combine significant CGI with real-world interaction.

NAFV_P• 13 years ago

I last saw that film about twenty years ago, I think I should catch it again. Back to the Future had some great lines in it as well, but as yet I haven't caught Used Cars.

tanzam75• 13 years ago

It was also one of the first movies to combine significant CGI with real-world interaction.

The was no CGI in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was all traditional animation, hand-drawn on celluloid sheets.

It wouldn't be until Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park that CGI really broke through as a technique that could be used in conjunction with live-action.

will_critchlow• 13 years ago

How long would the streetcar have taken vs the time to travel via manhattan on the subway? (Londoner here so trying to put it in context).

ams61102• 13 years ago

Thoughts that occurred to me as I read this:

1. Why were privately owned mass transit systems the norm in the first half of the 20th century, and why is that now considered "impossible" today?

2. Why is it OK for government to "monopolize mass transit", which they have done almost everywhere, but a criminal "conspiracy" when four private entities try to do it?

wmf• 13 years ago

On point 2, presumably the government has no vested interest in any particular form of mass transit and thus would choose the most efficient one, while the private companies (in this case) are accused of using buses to prop up other businesses (cars, tires, and oil).

nine_k2• 13 years ago

I wish I lived in the idyllic world which your sentence describes.

It always puzzles me when people presume that governments or public offices act more virtuously, free from vested interests, agendas, prejudices, etc. I would understand it if governments imported their staff from angels. In reality, they have to hire the same human beings that private corporations hire.

ams61102• 13 years ago

They may or may not have a vested interest in buses vs. trolleys. But I think that they most definitely have an interest in monopolizing something like mass transit because it provides a huge opportunity for patronage jobs, ghost employment, union/pension shenanigans, contracting kickbacks, and vote-buying. Just off the top of my head.

krakensden• 13 years ago

Significantly more regulation?

I've heard that NY has enough private buses that some areas effectively do have a private mass transit system, but I've no firsthand knowledge.

They're also slightly or definitely illegal.

acjohnson555• 13 years ago

It was hardly paradise. The systems of the various companies had separate fare collection and few interconnections, and the maps from those days look thoroughly incomprehensible.

After the consolidation, it took a major project to provide the modest amount of interconnection we have today, via the Chrystie Street Connection [1], and that only united 2 of the 3 legacy systems. We're still left with bizarre redundancies in some parts of the system and lack of service in others, and two entirely separate systems (known as the A-divsion and B-division) that will likely never be fully consolidated.

Today, as much as I can find plenty to criticize about the system, after many decades of public stewardship, NYC's mass transit system is by far the best of any city I've ever been to.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystie_Street_Connection

saltyknuckles2• 13 years ago

It keeps the hipsters out of Queens and then rent stays low. Do you really need another coffee shop for people to hog up tables using wifi all day?

acjohnson555• 13 years ago

What else are coffee shops for?

saltyknuckles2• 13 years ago

coffee

tzs2• 13 years ago

Ever try to get from Brooklyn to Queens, two of the most populated boroughs of New York City? Without a car, it's nearly impossible, as most subway lines require one to go through Manhattan first.

Could someone explain this to those of us who have never been to New York and whose only knowledge of its subways comes from TV and movies?

The impression I get from subway travel as depicted on TV and in movies is that trains run frequently enough that trips requiring changing trains aren't a big deal. So what's the problem is you have to go to Manhattan then change trains to go to Queens?

DrJokepu• 13 years ago

Such a journey would take a very long time, between 50 and 90 minutes depending on the time of the day and the exact starting point / destination.

mkopinsky2• 13 years ago

For example, consider this journey:

https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d83509!2...

30 minutes by car, 1:18 by public transit.

robertnealan• 13 years ago

To add on to DrJokepu, while trains depart frequently it can take quite a long time to get from the middle of Brooklyn/Queens, loop through Manhattan, and then go back out to the middle of the other, especially if it's a local train that stops at every station (versus express trains which only stop at select stations).

As someone who had no idea how huge New York really is until I visited for my first time, Google Maps shows the center of Queens and center of Brooklyn being a 12.7 mile drive apart. If you have to loop through Manhattan that turns into a nearly 30 mile loop.

raldi2• 13 years ago

What did the trolleys provide that today's bus system does not?

jstalin• 13 years ago

That's an important point overlooked by those who are wistful for trolleys. Buses at least can change routes. Trolleys were from a time when few had cars and spending lots of money on a fixed route was efficient. Now it's not.

raldi2• 13 years ago

So perhaps the actual blame lies not with the change from trolleys to buses, but rather the change from light traffic to heavy traffic, as the automobile industry took off.

aptwebapps• 13 years ago

Funny not to mention Robert Moses in an article about this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

Why It's So Hard to Get From Brooklyn to Queens

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