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meantnothingatall t1_j9v7k5u wrote

Reply to comment by AceContinuum in MTA Pushes Congestion Pricing Back to Second Quarter of 2024 by perspicatic

I don't live in Jersey but I worked nights and evenings, including weekends, for many years in health care. Transit completely sucks. Walking on the streets at that time of night sucks. Sometimes my commute back to Brooklyn would be TWO HOURS working evenings/weekends. If I drove, it would've been thirty minutes or less.

I still work evenings and they screwed with my train line so my commute home requires multiple train transfers, which is not an issue during the day. However, if one of those trains is messed up, there goes the entire ride home.

It's a totally different animal during the day. You have tons of buses, trains, express buses, etc. I feel like working evenings/nights, especially in a "twenty-four hour city" at places that need you to be there to keep patients alive, is something that should be considered. Staffing at many of these places already sucks, and adding the additional cost when you're already picking up "off shifts" will probably have people looking elsewhere.

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AceContinuum t1_j9v9zls wrote

If you're going to/from Manhattan, express bus service actually runs great overnight - faster and more reliable than during the day, due to much lighter traffic. I always prefer subways during the day and express buses at night.

If you're going between outer boroughs, then I agree transit sucks (although it also sucks during the day as well), but that wouldn't really be relevant to the congestion pricing discussion because that would only apply to Manhattan below 96th.

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meantnothingatall t1_j9vay13 wrote

There is no express bus that close to me and the closest one stops at around 7 PM. Therefore, it's useless to anyone who works off-shift. I've never lived anywhere that had overnight express buses.

I am talking about going from the outer boroughs to the city and back, which is my experience as someone who has commuted like this for years. Off-shift is a joke. Between the outer boroughs completely sucks but that is not what I was speaking to in my first comment.

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AceContinuum t1_j9vfxoa wrote

My closest express bus line also runs during peak hours only. I've never taken it because, from the MTA's timetables, it would be slower (due to traffic) than taking the subway.

However, overnight, I take a 24/7 express bus from Manhattan to S.I. and then transfer to the SIR to finish my trip. Overnight, the express bus makes it from FiDi to Old Town in 20 minutes flat. Shaves a ton of time off of waiting for the S.I. Ferry (which often goes to 1-hour headways overnight) or, worse, crawling down the Fourth Avenue line in Brooklyn on the R (which is godawful overnight).

I don't know which part of the city you're in, but I'm pretty sure there are 24/7 express bus lines to every outer borough. Perhaps you might look into taking an express bus to a subway line convenient to where you live. Even though you'd still be taking the subway for the "last mile," that could still help you save a lot of time.

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