Mass Transit Highs and Lows

There is not a lot of public transportation experience among our group of four. One of the biggest challenges we expected was navigating the big cities of the Eastern seaboard. Our first experience was a few days ago in Boston. The night before with a few quick Google searches and some Google Maps work we had a pretty good understanding of how to get around. In the morning we drove over to the Park&Ride for the commuter train into the city, got off at North Station and hopped the "T" (Boston subway) up to Harvard and back, walked the Freedom trail, rode the T some more and the commuter train back, with no issues. Boston does a great job of providing maps throughout the stations and on the trains so we could check a map and know the right train in 30 seconds. The commuter train was a bit expensive at $9.50 but the T was only $2 per trip. I'm confident just about anyone could navigate Boston's mass transit.

To get into New York City, we stayed in Newark, NJ to save on hotel costs and planned to hop the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) train into Manhattan and then take the famous NYC subway from there. The PATH train was easy enough and cheap ($2.50), but when it came time to take the subway up to Times Square it got pretty ugly. Online it says you can get a system map from any subway station agent... we tried 3 and none of them had one. This wouldn't be a problem if they had the maps posted on the wall, but they are few and far between. Throw in the fact that their train naming is as clear as mud as far as which direction you want to go, and once you're on the train there isn't a map to be found and we count ourselves pretty lucky we never went on the wrong train. And wow what a difference between Boston and NYC as far as the people! The Saturday vs. Monday may have something to do with it but everyone in Boston was pretty laid back, nothing like NYC. People were running through all the stations and cramming on trains like the world was on fire. Strange considering the trains come every 5 minutes or so. Overall the NYC subway was a pretty unpleasant experience.

The DC Metro we used today was in a dead heat with Boston for user friendliness. It used a similar color coding and stop name scheme, and had similar huge, simplified and easy to understand system maps that let you get exactly where you wanted to go without straining your brain. It seems easy enough to put up maps and signs in your stations, so The City That Never Sleeps needs to get its act together so visitors like us are willing to come back and spend our money in their city.