At 48 Minutes, NYers Have Nation’s Longest Commute

A report released Tuesday by the Partnership for New York City shows that New Yorkers spend 13 minutes longer than the national average, displacing California, along the site of carmageddons and parking lot parkways.

“I was coming from Monsey late last night,” Yisroel Werdyger, who sings at simchos, told Hamodia on Wednesday. “I was on the George Washington Bridge — it was a parking lot.”

The report also found that the sheer magnitude of people flowing in and out of Manhattan every day doubles its population. With 1.5 million commuters, the majority comes in from the other four boroughs with more than one third coming in from other states.

By comparison, travel for work between Queens and Brooklyn is only about 150,000 riders every day. More than half, the report notes, have to drive “due to limited public transit options.”

The most insular borough is Staten Island, where a stunning 78.5 percent of the people who work there also live there. The “forgotten borough” is the only one without mass transit connecting it to the rest of the city. The report recommends adding an additional stop to the Staten Island ferry.

Brooklyn has seen a 24 percent increase, and the Bronx a 28 percent boost, in the number of people who both live and work there over the past decade thanks to a boom in new businesses.

“But the borough still has a lot to do before becoming a jobs center,” the authors write. “For every one person who commutes into the Bronx for work, four people commute out, indicating a lack of job opportunities.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the August 15th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.