Here’s a Map Showing Which Brooklyn Neighborhoods Have the Best—and Worst—Commute Times
- c/o primawan.info
New Yorkers have strong opinions on, well, almost everything. And those opinions are almost always backed up by each person’s certainty that his or her opinion is actually a fact. And there’s one type of opinion-presented-as-fact that every New Yorker likes to lay claim to more than just about anything else, namely, that his or her morning commute is worse than anyone else’s.
It sometimes feel as if comparing commute times is the newest form of dick-measuring between co-workers; people complain about the trials of living in Bushwick and commuting to DUMBO, and having to transfer in Manhattan every morning, but then that terrible commute will get trumped by the one guy who lives in Bay Ridge and has to take the R on a regular basis if he ever wants to go anywhere, and then someone will pipe up that they avoid all this stress by just riding a bike everywhere. This bike-commuter is instantly hated, of course, by everyone, because how can you help but hate someone who is demonstrably better than you? But collective hatred doesn’t help the fact that even intraborough commuting is a stressful and time-consuming thing.
But whose commute is actually the worst? And who has it the easiest? How can you know that the one guy who lives in Bay Ridge actually has it so bad coming in on the R every morning? Where’s the proof? Well! There’s now a super handy map which can instantly proove who suffers the most each morning. WNYC collected all the relevant data about subway commutes (buses, bikes, cars, and walking were not taken into account) and assembled this awesome interactive map so that you can see just how bad commuting times from different neighborhoods really are. All you have to do is click on your address and you’ll see how long it takes to get to anywhere else in the city. What’s almost immediately apparent is that actual distance between two places doesn’t mean a damn thing. It’s all about living on the good, fast subway lines, like the B/Q or the D, and not having to bear the burden of life on the R. Because if there’s one thing this map teaches us, it’s that getting around Brooklyn on a local train takes too damn long. SO use this map to show your co-workers that it is, in fact, you, and not them, who has to make the longest trek each morning, and get them to feel sorry for you and buy you a beer or something. You deserve it. You live on the G. Life is tough.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen