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pseydtonneI've been researching a future trip to France because I may get the chance in a few months. I'm saving up for French business-level immersion for two to three weeks. I'd cross my fingers but I'm an agnostic.
Side note: when I was in Catholic grammar school, we would practice crossing all ten fingers at the same time. I can still do this rather rapidly: each middle finger over its neighboring index, each ring finger over it neighboring pinky, right thumb over left.
I have been doing a bunch of research toward the trip to keep myself from going insane. Today I figured out how much more cost effective it is to fly out of New York (JFK or Newark) versus Boston (at least $150, often twice that). I also puled together the most cost-effective ways to get to JFK and Newark from here.
Most of the flights to continental Europe from the east Coast of U.S. are leaving either Dulles in northern Virginia (IAD) or JFK. If the flight is out of Dulles, it's no big deal just to fly from Logan (BOS) to Dulles and suck up the cost to avoid nine to eleven hours of ground travel in the busiest corridor of America. However the cheapest deals are often from Newark to Charles-de-Gaulle (Roissy) Airport in suburban Paris. Let's examine the options:
1) Logan (BOS)
This one is the simplest for anyone living inside the T's reach. You take the Red Line to South Station, then the Silver Line SL1 bus directly to your terminal. The fare is $1.70 each way using a CharlieCard.
Since most of us would have to use the MBTA to get to any of the other locations, I am not counting its cost in the equations below.
2) JFK
If a flight directly from JFK is at least $75 cheaper than flying out of Boston, it's very tempting to take the Chinese jitney to New York and take mass transit from there.
The jitneys are motor coach (intercity bus) lines run out of store fronts in New York's Chinatown. They originally catered only to the Chinese population but have become the most popular way to get from various eastern seaboard metropoles (and even Pittsburgh) to Manhattan. They keep their prices low by not using the Port Authority Bus Terminal and instead dropping off passengers at locations in Chinatown. There are three major jitney lines but i can only recall two of them:
A) Lucky Star: http://www.luckystarbus.com/Schedules.aspx (their schedule page)
This is the second most popular of the services. It has a special bus that leaves Boston's South Station (gate 13) at 2 a.m. to reach New York before rush hour. This bus is $25 instead of the usual $15 but the time improvement can make that ten bucks a wise investment.
The terminus in Chinatown is 69 Chrystie Street between Canal and Hester.
B) Fung Wah: https://www.fungwahbus.com/Default.aspx
Fung Wah also leaves Boston from South Station, from gate 25 on the bus terminal's left wing. Fung Wah's terminal in Chinatown is at 139 Grand Street, which is around the block from Lucky Star's terminal at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. They charge $15 each way as well. The times are almost identical.
The closest subway stop to either jitney's drop-off is Grand Street on the B & D. This is two blocks north up Chrystie, away from Canal. From here you can take either train uptown two stops to West 4th St/Washington Square and take the E uptown express almost to the end. This is the fastest way to the Sutphin Boulevard/Archer Avenue/JFK stop, as there are only six stops within Queens before S/A stop. Then it's the $5 SkyTrain to the JFK terminals.
3) Newark Liberty International Airport (ERW)
Sometime in the last decade Newark Airport's name grew to add some jingoism. New Jersey has such low self-esteem that it always tries to add a creepy flair to things that just don't need it. (Hey New Jersey, just start bragging about having the most integrated and progressive mass transit system in the U.S. and all the hippies will want your plentiful suburban property for its low carbon footprint.) I suspect this airport across from the Ikea in Elizabeth will eventualy be called the Frank Sinatra Bruce Springsteen Worldly Freedom's Home Port.
It's significantly cheaper to take the train from Newark's Penn Station than it is from New York Penn. You can take the PATH train (the old H&M tube) from West 4th Street to the end of the line at Newark for $1.75, which only takes 22 minutes and is only two more minutes than the NJT straight out of New York Penn without the trip uptown and half the schlep to a platform. There is a direct line from the former World Trade Center to Newark: if you catch the PATH along Sixth Ave, you'll have to change trains at Grove Street or Journal Square.
Then you take a New Jersey Transit's Northeast Corridor line toward Trenton for just one stop (five minutes) and get to the transfer station (heh-heh... that's a cruel pun).
ERW has a special transfer station to take you from NJT or Amtrak to their AirTrain terminal service -- there isn't even ground service available from the station. The AirTrain is $5.50 from the NJT stop to the airport but it's free if you're travelling within the airport complex. You can buy your AirTrain ticket when you buy your NJT ticket: they price it as one charge but you get two tickets, one for each service.
Figuring out the rates can be nutty. Even NJT's web page offers the shortcut of pasting "Newark Airport RR Station" in the destination line for their search engine.
Just to proide a comparison, direct service on Amtrak from Boston South Station (also BOS) to the EWR train station (also called EWR) is $65 each way. From BOS to New york Penn Station (NYP) it's $59 each way (no discounts for round trips). You don't save any money by changing to Metro North at New Haven: it's $43 for BOS-HVN and $14 off-peak from HVN to Grand Central but then you pay $2 for the subway and you're where you started. Since that $65 probably doesn't include the AirTrain ticket, it's still cheaper to go the whole way to EWR instead of changing to NJT but it's still a crazy cost to take the train.
Let's cmpare with Greyhound bus service from South Station to the Port Authority. Those schmucks charge $106 for refundable tickets, $58 r/t for 3 or 7-day advance purchase, $54 for 14-day advance purchase, $69 or $59 for non-refundable tickets. Since I would know I was going, $54 sounds best. They do e-tickets, but i do not know whether there is a fee.
Let's see... jitney is $15 x 2 = $30 but I'd need to take the subway to PATH, Greyhound is $54 but I save $2 x 2 on subway rides.
jitney r/t: $30 + $4 + $3.50 + $15.50 = $53
Greyhound r/t: $54 + $3.50 + $15.50 = $73
Amtrak r/t: $130 + $11 = $141
Jeeze... it's still the inscrutable folks by a landslide.
4) Dulles International Airport in Virginia (IAD)
Apex Bus has jitneys from NYC to DC and other locations along the I-95 and I-85 corridor to Atlanta. The Chinatown terminus is 88 East Broadway, at the corner of Forsyth and almost dirctly underneath the Manhattan Bridge. The DC terminal is 610 I (Eye) Street NW, where the nearest Metrorail stop is two blocks down 7th Street in front of the Verizon Center (Gallery Plaza-Chinatown stop). The four and a half hour trips cost $20 each way.
If you're really feeling adventurous, you can use this to get to Washington and from there to Dulles, which is 30 miles away. Take the Red Line toward Shady Grove for one stop to Metro Center, then take the Orange Line toward Vienna/Fairfax/GMU (or the Blue Line if you're only going to Rosslyn).
If you get off at Rosslyn ($1.65 o/w), you can then take the 5A DC-Dulles bus up route 267 to the Main Terminal. This is significantly faster than taking the bus from its origin at L'Enfant Plaza as the bus takes half an hour just to get to Rosslyn on the other side of the Potomac. The bus arrives every 40 minutes and takes about 45 minutes. This is an expres bus and it costs $3.10 o/w.
If instead you get off at West Falls Church ($3.25 o/w) then you can take the Wasington Flyer Coach for $9 o/w ($16 r/t). It's a far cushier bus, it arrives every half-hour and it only takes 25 minutes.
However you'll probably spend as much time on crowded buses as you will again on crowded puddle-hoppers. Do you really want to be that out of mental shape when you hit passport control and customs? While it's nice to know one can get from Boston to DC by bus for $35 each way, it would take most of a day to get there.
Let's review the Boston to New York and DC skinflint options:
-notes for all you runaways, Ps/d
Side note: when I was in Catholic grammar school, we would practice crossing all ten fingers at the same time. I can still do this rather rapidly: each middle finger over its neighboring index, each ring finger over it neighboring pinky, right thumb over left.
I have been doing a bunch of research toward the trip to keep myself from going insane. Today I figured out how much more cost effective it is to fly out of New York (JFK or Newark) versus Boston (at least $150, often twice that). I also puled together the most cost-effective ways to get to JFK and Newark from here.
Most of the flights to continental Europe from the east Coast of U.S. are leaving either Dulles in northern Virginia (IAD) or JFK. If the flight is out of Dulles, it's no big deal just to fly from Logan (BOS) to Dulles and suck up the cost to avoid nine to eleven hours of ground travel in the busiest corridor of America. However the cheapest deals are often from Newark to Charles-de-Gaulle (Roissy) Airport in suburban Paris. Let's examine the options:
1) Logan (BOS)
This one is the simplest for anyone living inside the T's reach. You take the Red Line to South Station, then the Silver Line SL1 bus directly to your terminal. The fare is $1.70 each way using a CharlieCard.
Since most of us would have to use the MBTA to get to any of the other locations, I am not counting its cost in the equations below.
2) JFK
If a flight directly from JFK is at least $75 cheaper than flying out of Boston, it's very tempting to take the Chinese jitney to New York and take mass transit from there.
The jitneys are motor coach (intercity bus) lines run out of store fronts in New York's Chinatown. They originally catered only to the Chinese population but have become the most popular way to get from various eastern seaboard metropoles (and even Pittsburgh) to Manhattan. They keep their prices low by not using the Port Authority Bus Terminal and instead dropping off passengers at locations in Chinatown. There are three major jitney lines but i can only recall two of them:
A) Lucky Star: http://www.luckystarbus.com/Schedules.aspx (their schedule page)
This is the second most popular of the services. It has a special bus that leaves Boston's South Station (gate 13) at 2 a.m. to reach New York before rush hour. This bus is $25 instead of the usual $15 but the time improvement can make that ten bucks a wise investment.
The terminus in Chinatown is 69 Chrystie Street between Canal and Hester.
B) Fung Wah: https://www.fungwahbus.com/Default.aspx
Fung Wah also leaves Boston from South Station, from gate 25 on the bus terminal's left wing. Fung Wah's terminal in Chinatown is at 139 Grand Street, which is around the block from Lucky Star's terminal at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. They charge $15 each way as well. The times are almost identical.
The closest subway stop to either jitney's drop-off is Grand Street on the B & D. This is two blocks north up Chrystie, away from Canal. From here you can take either train uptown two stops to West 4th St/Washington Square and take the E uptown express almost to the end. This is the fastest way to the Sutphin Boulevard/Archer Avenue/JFK stop, as there are only six stops within Queens before S/A stop. Then it's the $5 SkyTrain to the JFK terminals.
3) Newark Liberty International Airport (ERW)
Sometime in the last decade Newark Airport's name grew to add some jingoism. New Jersey has such low self-esteem that it always tries to add a creepy flair to things that just don't need it. (Hey New Jersey, just start bragging about having the most integrated and progressive mass transit system in the U.S. and all the hippies will want your plentiful suburban property for its low carbon footprint.) I suspect this airport across from the Ikea in Elizabeth will eventualy be called the Frank Sinatra Bruce Springsteen Worldly Freedom's Home Port.
It's significantly cheaper to take the train from Newark's Penn Station than it is from New York Penn. You can take the PATH train (the old H&M tube) from West 4th Street to the end of the line at Newark for $1.75, which only takes 22 minutes and is only two more minutes than the NJT straight out of New York Penn without the trip uptown and half the schlep to a platform. There is a direct line from the former World Trade Center to Newark: if you catch the PATH along Sixth Ave, you'll have to change trains at Grove Street or Journal Square.
Then you take a New Jersey Transit's Northeast Corridor line toward Trenton for just one stop (five minutes) and get to the transfer station (heh-heh... that's a cruel pun).
ERW has a special transfer station to take you from NJT or Amtrak to their AirTrain terminal service -- there isn't even ground service available from the station. The AirTrain is $5.50 from the NJT stop to the airport but it's free if you're travelling within the airport complex. You can buy your AirTrain ticket when you buy your NJT ticket: they price it as one charge but you get two tickets, one for each service.
Figuring out the rates can be nutty. Even NJT's web page offers the shortcut of pasting "Newark Airport RR Station" in the destination line for their search engine.
Just to proide a comparison, direct service on Amtrak from Boston South Station (also BOS) to the EWR train station (also called EWR) is $65 each way. From BOS to New york Penn Station (NYP) it's $59 each way (no discounts for round trips). You don't save any money by changing to Metro North at New Haven: it's $43 for BOS-HVN and $14 off-peak from HVN to Grand Central but then you pay $2 for the subway and you're where you started. Since that $65 probably doesn't include the AirTrain ticket, it's still cheaper to go the whole way to EWR instead of changing to NJT but it's still a crazy cost to take the train.
Let's cmpare with Greyhound bus service from South Station to the Port Authority. Those schmucks charge $106 for refundable tickets, $58 r/t for 3 or 7-day advance purchase, $54 for 14-day advance purchase, $69 or $59 for non-refundable tickets. Since I would know I was going, $54 sounds best. They do e-tickets, but i do not know whether there is a fee.
Let's see... jitney is $15 x 2 = $30 but I'd need to take the subway to PATH, Greyhound is $54 but I save $2 x 2 on subway rides.
jitney r/t: $30 + $4 + $3.50 + $15.50 = $53
Greyhound r/t: $54 + $3.50 + $15.50 = $73
Amtrak r/t: $130 + $11 = $141
Jeeze... it's still the inscrutable folks by a landslide.
4) Dulles International Airport in Virginia (IAD)
Apex Bus has jitneys from NYC to DC and other locations along the I-95 and I-85 corridor to Atlanta. The Chinatown terminus is 88 East Broadway, at the corner of Forsyth and almost dirctly underneath the Manhattan Bridge. The DC terminal is 610 I (Eye) Street NW, where the nearest Metrorail stop is two blocks down 7th Street in front of the Verizon Center (Gallery Plaza-Chinatown stop). The four and a half hour trips cost $20 each way.
If you're really feeling adventurous, you can use this to get to Washington and from there to Dulles, which is 30 miles away. Take the Red Line toward Shady Grove for one stop to Metro Center, then take the Orange Line toward Vienna/Fairfax/GMU (or the Blue Line if you're only going to Rosslyn).
If you get off at Rosslyn ($1.65 o/w), you can then take the 5A DC-Dulles bus up route 267 to the Main Terminal. This is significantly faster than taking the bus from its origin at L'Enfant Plaza as the bus takes half an hour just to get to Rosslyn on the other side of the Potomac. The bus arrives every 40 minutes and takes about 45 minutes. This is an expres bus and it costs $3.10 o/w.
If instead you get off at West Falls Church ($3.25 o/w) then you can take the Wasington Flyer Coach for $9 o/w ($16 r/t). It's a far cushier bus, it arrives every half-hour and it only takes 25 minutes.
However you'll probably spend as much time on crowded buses as you will again on crowded puddle-hoppers. Do you really want to be that out of mental shape when you hit passport control and customs? While it's nice to know one can get from Boston to DC by bus for $35 each way, it would take most of a day to get there.
Let's review the Boston to New York and DC skinflint options:
$15.00: South Station -> NYC Chinatown (or $25 at 2 a.m.) $ 2.00: NYC subway (BD uptown to W4th, E uptown to Sutphin/Archer) $ 5.50: JFK SkyTrain ======= $22.50 $15.00: South Station -> NYC Chinatown (or $25 at 2 a.m.) $ 2.00: NYC subway (BD uptown to W4th, E downtown to WTC) $ 1.75: PATH to Newark Penn Station $ 7.75: NJTransit to Newark Liberty Train Station (inlcudes $5.50 for Liberty AirTrain to the terminals) ======== $26.50 $15.00: South Station -> NYC Chinatown (or $25 at 2 a.m.) $ 2.00: NYC subway (BD uptown to W4th, ACE uptown to 34th St Penn Station) $15.00: NJTransit to Newark Liberty Train Station (includes $5.50 for Liberty AirTrain to the terminals) ======= $32.00 $15.00: South Station -> NYC Chinatown (or $25 at 2 a.m.) $20.00: NYC Chinatown -> DC Chinatown $ 1.65: Gallery Pl-Chinatown -> Rosslyn (Orange or Blue line) $ 3.10: 5A bus to Dulles Main Terminal ======= $39.75 $15.00: South Station -> NYC Chinatown (or $25 at 2 a.m.) $20.00: NYC Chinatown -> DC Chinatown $ 3.25: Gallery Pl-Chinatown -> West Falls Church (Orange Line) $ 8.00: WashFlyer to Man Terminal ======= $46.25
-notes for all you runaways, Ps/d
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 09:43 pm (UTC)I have availed myself of this several times.