It has always gotten me to where I want to go fairly quickly and cheaply: what more should it do?
more like, you should want to go to more places than just capitol hill, westlake, and the airport
1 Like
Considering that Cincinnatiās was praised in this thread Iām just gonna sayā¦ thatās a huge chunk of the city by comparison.
Cincinnatiās streetcar is more analogous to Seattleās monorail than Seattleās light rail. Granted itās a little more than the monorail, but only a little.
this is a great subway system.
the only thing that can compare is NYCās, and even NYCās is not that great because you canāt get from the bronx to brooklyn or queens easily
2 Likes
London has a pretty extensive underground and the overground system nicely complements it. Much prefer it to New York.
Yep. The main downside I saw was that it doesnāt have US customs preclearance, so Iāll get to experience customs when I get back to Boston (and still have a hike back to my car, and then a 2-hour drive). Hopefully my Nexus card will make the process less onerous.
Hong kongās subway was impressive. The city population is smaller and probably much more dense. I donāt recall it being nearly as extensive as the map for seoul.
Seoul is a relatively new city though, isnāt it? Not that itās existence is new, but most of what you see built was not there in 1985. Hong Kong i think really tore up a lot of the city for their system. Nyc and other cities in the US has lots of existing buildings to deal with.
Oh yeah, I meant āthe only thing that can compare in the US is NYCāsā. Plenty of other cities around the world have really good subway systems.
But yeah, NYC is probably one of the oldest.
I donāt know about Chicago and Seattle though. They both burned to the ground so had plenty of opportunity to build something nice but didnāt.
I canāt stand being in a car for more than a couple hours. Iāve flown to avoid a four hour drive.
Yeah, the train is the most pleasant way to travel. Plenty of space, you can walk around, plug in your devices, watch the scenery, sleep, work, readā¦ They even sell a variety of food. I still prefer flying over a really long train ride, but a few hours on a train is completely fine.
Anyway, i think sheās exaggerating. I flew a couple weeks ago, and except that i wore an N95 mask, it all seemed completely normal. The airports werenāt crazy, security wasnāt crazy, the flight was full, but thatās been common for years, and the flight attendants seemed fine. So did the flight attendant on my bus to the airport. She was itchy about the bus being a little late, but she seemed rested and ready to go.
Ugh! A four hour drive would take longer to fly when you do a door-to-door calculation, and thatās assuming a nonstop flight exists and no flight delays.
I find driving pleasant so this is incomprehensible to me unless I really really did not want my car at the other end.
If my destination was Manhattan then perhaps that would be the case (a car is a liability rather than an asset in Manhattan), but the train is surely a better option in that case.
Yeah, that was a two from Boston to Manhattan, and i did the math, and flying was faster. Moreso than i would have expected. (Iāve never been a "site up two hours in advance flier. An hour has generally been fine.)
In general, though, for any trip along the North East corridor, Amtrak is the nicest option, even though it takes a little longer than driving. And weirdly, taking a bus is usually cheaper than paying for gas. (And way cheaper if the destination is Manhattan, and youād have to deal with parking the car there.)
I did drive when i wanted to go from Princeton, NJ to the Boston suburb where my parents used to live. That was very unpleasant, but it was the only practical way to get there. The train took too long for our usual trip, and was far more expensive. And i suppose we were poor, then, and couldnāt easily have afforded the train fare.
You must have been starting out close to Logan and going when it wasnāt rush hour. Iām surprised an hour at the airport is sufficient with how long security takes. Theyāve now upped the guidance from 90 minutes to 2 hours, even for domestic flights. That said, the last time I went through security at Logan I donāt recall it being a problem. It was mid-afternoon though, so that certainly helped.
Yeah, Logan to La Guardia, and i started in downtown Boston, and ended in northern Manhattan, taking the shuttle. Logan has lots of separate security lines, and most of them move pretty fast.
When i was a kid i used to take the then Eastern Air shuttle every year, from Logan to Newark to visit my cousins. That was when we had less security theater, but it was a pretty pleasant trip.
Itās still hard to fathom, even if you Ubered to Logan this avoiding parking. This seems awfully optimistic.
0.5 hours - Uber to Logan
1 hour - security / waiting for flight
0.75 hours - flight to LGA
0.5 hours - deplane, exit terminal, wait for shuttle
0.75 hours - shuttle to uptown
Thatās 3.5 hours if positively everything goes right with extremely good traffic on both ends (in cities not known for good traffic) and you completely ignore the guidance on when to arrive at the airport (which was 90 minutes for a long time before they recently bumped it to 2 hours). With such favorable traffic you could make the drive in 3.5 hours too.
Still, you donāt want a car in Manhattan, so it makes sense for that reason.
Iāve been on that very flight. And yeah, traveling in the 80s and earlier was a breeze compared to now. You could get to the airport 30 minutes early, no sweat. The seats were a lot bigger, you had a lot more legroom, the airplane was cleaner, they fed you if it was a long flightā¦ traveling in coach then was more pleasant than flying first class now. Especially once they put in the no smoking sections.
20 minutes cab to Logan
65 minutes hanging out in airport
50 minutes flight, including spectacular views of both Boston and New York. I could often pick out the building i lived in in New York
20 minutes deplane and catch a cab
25 minutes cab to home (per Google maps, traffic now, rounded up.)
So about 3 hours, with typical non-rush-hour traffic.
And no driving aimlessly around in Manhattan traffic looking for a place to put the car, no long walk from garage to destination.
Of course, i didnāt own a car when i lived in Manhattan, so if Iād wanted to drive, i would have had to add time to pick up and return the rental.
Yup.
Anyone remember the really old days before airport screening was introduced because of all those ātake me to Cubaā hijackings?
Those were a bummer, especially when I wanted to go to Luton
Heading out to Paris next week, definitely not looking forward to the flight there. Heading back I have a connection in London, 1.5 hour layover so could be interesting. Sure London is not a bad place to be stuck but Iām so worried about the baggage retrieval system they have at Heathrow.
Driving in traffic for 4 hours is unpleasant. Driving on empty highways for 4 hours is nice.
I suspect Boston to NY involves a fair amount of trafficā¦
1 Like