On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 06:39:03 +0100, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson
at port.ac.uk (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance
Traveller:

>On Sun, 29 Jun 2025, 22:23 Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com
>(via tml list), <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

>> Railroad and subway for me; each trip $8.86 combined fare.

>That sounds like good value, even doubled for there amd back.  I used to
>get am annualnseason ticket which made it cheaper but since covid, I don't
>go into work enough to make that worthwhile.

The rail portion is working out the per-trip effective cost of the monthly
pass. Call it 44 trips in a typical month, but the pass is good for
unlimited rides during the calendar month between any two stations from
Grand Central to the farthest station in my home fare zone. I have a
fifteen-minute walk (0.6 mi., just about 1km) from home to my rail station,
and maybe two minutes from my destination subway station to One Police
Plaza. Rail is 35-40 minutes from home to Grand Central; subway is 15-20
minutes Grand Central to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall. Subject, of course, to
delays due to mechanical or signal problems, weather, or "disruptive
passengers" (a typical MTA misspelling of "fucking assholes").

Subway is a flat fare of $2.90 per trip. There's no longer an equivalent to
the 'unlimited rides' pass for the subway; now, we have a tap-card system
(OMNY; MetroCard is dead), and if you spend more than 13 rides equivalent
on the tap-card within 7 calendar days, the rest of the 7 days won't be
charged. The tap card can be a credit card, an Apple or Android Pay account
on your phone, or a specifically-purchased OMNY card; the only requirement
for the 7-day discount is that you use the same card for all of the rides.

>I used to do rail and tube (sorry, railroad and subway) - or in fact mile
>walk, ferry, train, two tubes and a bus when I worked at the Royal
>Geographical Society in London.  One way trip of just short of three
>hours!  Every day.  For 5 years.

That long a commute would kill me - seven to eight hours of sleep, eight
hours at work, six in travel, when would I have time to eat or work on the
magazine?

>Ah, on the bus i have to have noise cancelling headphones if I want to
>listen to anything.  But usually I just put them on to block out the noise
>amd get on with reading.

The railroad trains were always louder outside than inside, even fifty
years ago, and the sound insulation on the subways has gotten much better
over the decades. I won't say that my hearing is undamaged from all those
years of commuting (the doctors say it's normal, but I'm not entirely
convinced), but it certainly doesn't bother me enough to be willing to
tolerate Thingies near my ears.

>On the other hand, a Samsung
>> Galaxy Tab S8 with Cantook installed allows me to carry a sizeable library
>> with little inconvenience,
>
>
>Yes, it's ridiculous just how many books I have actually on me, sitting on
>the bus.  Never mind in the cloud.  'Course, im still rather partial to
>having a print book (occasionally two) for preference.  (Or *just in case*
>all my batteries fail!)

Print books are nice, but eventually you do run out of space for them. My
position on data in "the cloud" can be summed up quite simply: "If your
data isn't on your computer, it's not your data".

>Actually, I have to be a bit paranoid about not allowing batteries to fail,
>at least on my phone, since the bus company took away card tickets and
>insisted on an app based system.

Public transportation here hasn't forced app use; while we don't have a
GDPR, we do have a sizeable segment of the population that refuses to trade
personal data for convenience. And I've yet to see an app that doesn't want
access to more data than is really appropriate for the app's advertised
purpose. While the subway does require the use of a tap card, you can still
use coin to pay the fare on the bus.

>50% of my buses have (pathetic) USB charging sockets so I now carry a cable
>just in case my phone has had a hard day.  But batteryife was the main
>reason I last upgraded my phone.

Some of our buses have USB, but it seems that there's a PSA floating around
to not use them because datajacking - apparently, they aren't isolated from
the 'net, and some have been found compromised.

>> I'm neither stupid nor insane, so driving isn't really an option. And even
>> if I were stupid or insane, so is the price of parking in Manhattan. So,
>> no, I don't think so.

>I can't quite imagine trying to drive in New York.  I've only attempted to
>drive in London once.  In the middle of the  night which made it feasible.
>Although, as a student I used to cycle there.  That probably was stupid and
>insane.  Invigorating though!

Cycling wouldn't be out of the question if I were in better shape, although
it would take quite a bit longer, since I'd be limited to local streets,
complete with stop signs and traffic lights. But it would be viable only
because I'd be able to bring the bike into the building and place it in
secure storage. Locking a bike up in public is a good way of having it
stolen.

®Traveller is a registered trademark of
Mongoose Publishing, 1977-2025. Use of
the trademark in this notice and in the
referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.

--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
http://www.freelancetraveller.com

Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
enterprises for hosting services:

onCloud/CyberWeb Enterprises (http://www.oncloud.io)