New York City Down and Back. Part I: Two Kinds of Traffic

Some days start earlier than others.

That's 4:58 AM.  It should read 4:45 as I had planned to take the  picture  in the driveway before I started the drive. But I forgot.   Hey, it was early.  I took this waiting at a stop sign.

Every month or so, I drive from Ithaca to New York City for a meeting.  It is 223 miles from my house to the parking garage I normally use in Manhattan. Meetings always start at 10:00am.

So the alarm went off very early, as it always does on these days, this past Friday.  It sounds awful to have to drive to and from New York all in one day, but it only happens once a month and there are some things about the trip that I look forward to.  

For one thing, it's always a day when I can be sure to hear Morning Edition on NPR from start to finish.  And for the first few hours anyway, the roads are mostly deserted. That's one kind of traffic.

The world is also quite a bit "darker" in the early morning than it is late at night.  I'm not talking about "darkest before the dawn" kind of stuff; the landscape is just darker at 5am than it is even late at night. There are fewer lights on in buildings and houses in the early morning, making the ones that are on stand out that much more.  I often have that moment of thinking "what are they doing up?" as I zip past.  Is someone sick?  Or can't sleep?  Or going on a trip?  Or rifling through papers they just found in the back of an old chest of draws?  Or playing cards? Or burying a body? Or...

Of course, they are probably just doing what I'm doing.  Going to work.  If I drove this route every morning at 5 I'm sure I'd see most of the same lights on.  But I'm the one out of my routine in this case and so the imagination wanders, just a little bit.

The lights that are on, apart from appealing to the more fanciful part of my brain, can be quite beautiful too as they blaze away in the blackness.  Which can make for some interesting photo ops as well.

The runway lights at the Ithaca Airport at 5ish in the morning.

I especially like being able to look into the dairy barns and see the cows chewing and waiting (I tried to get some pictures of that. They all sucked).

Because there is a specific time by which I have to arrive in New York, the route for the trip down is dictated by the need for speed. With virtually all of the roads (81 to 380 to 80) having posted speed limits of 65mph the trip ought to take about 3 and a half hours.

I should be able to leave my house at 6:00am and make it with time to spare.  Instead I need to leave by 4:45 to be sure to be on time.  While I have made the drive down in 3 and a half hours (Once.  In nearly 4 years), the trip has also taken 6 hours and on average takes about 4 and a half.

The reason for that is simple.  Traffic.  The other kind.  The crowded, maddening, soul destroying, am I EVER going to make it through this and boy do I really need to pee kind of traffic. 

You never know what the last few miles of the trip are going to look like.  Mostly they look like this:

The beginning of the slow down on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel

The first 219 miles of the drive Friday took 3:20.  The Final 4 took 45 minutes. I usually have the radio on as I head towards the City with an ear open for traffic reports about the Hudson river crossings.  It doesn't really affect my route because our office is only a few blocks from the Lincoln Tunnel.  That is where I am generally headed.  For it to make sense for me to switch to either the Holland Tunnel or the George Washington Bridge, the wait at the Lincoln would have to be 2 hours or more.  Which certainly happens, but I've been lucky so far.

Everyday type Lincoln tunnel traffic.   How many thousands of cars are ahead of me?

I listen anyway and have often wondered how they gauge the waiting time.  It has always seemed to take less time than the reports were predicting.  But on this trip I was paying careful attention (The Heisenblog Principle in actions? See post #2) and I have to say that the time from when the traffic really slowed to a crawl to when I drove into the tunnel was pretty much exactly the 45 minutes that was predicted.

Reaching speeds of 15mph is both a rarity and a luxury this close to the tunnel.  The car rarely gets past 2nd gear and spends much of the final stretch in 1st.  Driving in traffic like this is the only time I would prefer to be driving a car with an automatic transmission.  The sturdy little Scion has a stick shift, which makes it fun to drive, but if I had to do this constant stopping  and starting  everyday, I'd switch.

Which would be a tragedy, because manual transmissions are just better.  That's right, I said it!  Plus knowing how to drive a manual transmission is a valuable if increasingly rare skill.  It means you can drive a rental car in Europe for starters.  And it's cooler.  I'm glad both my daughters have or are learning how to drive a manual.  

In fact, my older daughter has even gotten to talk a little trash about having that particular skill.  Back in High School, some dopey boys were teasing her with that old stereotype about girls being bad drivers.  She just looked at them and said "Can you drive a stick?"  They looked sheepish, said "No" and slunk away.  Talk about delivering in the "clutch"!

The final approach to the tunnel has a great view of the Manhattan skyline just before the road makes the big sweeping turn into the toll booths.  I managed to get a few shots when we were once again at a standstill.

NYC Skyline from the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel.   It actually looks a lot better than this

As I neared the toll booth before the tunnel, I started to have another concern.  Ever since 9/11,  there has been a security presence at all the Hudson River crossings.  I'm not sure if they are TSA or NY/NJ Transit Authority police, but there are always cops standing in the roadway once you get past the toll barriers.  Last winter, I saw them stop a guy in a big SUV just before he entered the tunnel.  There had been a big snow storm overnight and the car had about a foot of snow on the roof.  They made him get out and clean it off (the fear I assume being that a big chunk of it would come off in the tunnel and whack following cars in the windshield) before letting him go on.  He was wearing a suit and as far as I could see didn't have a snow brush.  And it was about 20 degrees.  Although I should have, I did not feel sorry for him.

But I was not worrying about snow or the weather as I got close to the tunnel.  I was concerned that the cops might be a little suspicious of someone taking pictures of what has been identified as a potential target for a terrorist attack.  How could I end a story about traffic without pictures of the cars merging into the tunnel?

I made sure to take my pictures quickly and nowhere near where the cops stand.

Just before the toll barrier.  There are 14 booths. 

The left and center tubes.

The right tube, where I always head, is the best way to go if you need to
make a right onto 40th street once you are in Manhattan .

It is amazing how the traffic funnels from 14 toll booth lanes down into 3 tubes with 2 lanes each.  There is lots of honking and jockeying for position but I've never actually seen any collisions, although I'm sure they must happen all the time.  Once you are in the tube, it's pretty much smooth sailing.


Total time from walking out my door at home to walking into the office: 4 hours 25 minutes.  Pretty good, actually.


Of course, that's only the first half of the day.  Stay tuned for the exciting return trip!!!