Why Do People Drive to the City?
By John B. Pegram[1]
“Why do people drive to the city instead of taking transit?” I asked friends and acquaintances, and posted the question on three transit-related Reddit groups. Responses came from NY City, the suburbs and from around the world.
The most curable ways to convert drivers to transit appear to be improved off-peak service, comfort and reliability. Better connections and parking at stations outside the central city would help significantly.
NJ Entrance to Lincoln Tunnel
Infrequent Off-Peak Service
The most common, curable reason for driving to the city is infrequent service outside of peak service times for at least one leg of their trip. Many commenters’ principal reason for driving was that the off-peak or weekend train schedules where they live is once an hour or every two hours. That is more of a problem on commuter rail lines than on NYC Transit subway lines, which typically schedule three off-peak trains per hour. (I consider that frequency is minimally acceptable, especially if the rider needs to connect with other transit services).
Often, a person will drive to or from the central city during rush hour in one direction, because of poor transit service when going in the other direction. One commentor, whose workday ends at 11 pm, wrote, “I have coworkers who wind up missing their train by one minute & then they have to wait around for another hour for the next train home. No thanks!”
An attorney who commutes from New Jersey told me that he will drive to the city in the morning of a dinner meeting—instead of taking the train—because trains are hourly on his line in the evening. Otherwise, he will skip the evening meeting or leave the meeting early to avoid missing a train. None of these behaviors are good for the city.
Similar comments included:[2]
· Commuter train service heavily favors the standard office schedule. Building maintenance, construction, utilities workers, doctors and hospital staff, entertainment industry all work odd hours that don't align with the commuter railroads.
· Another reason I would drive in would be if I need to be there (or go home) at a time when the trains are not running.
· Some people work odd hours and transit options are limited for them.
· People work at odd hours, when there’s little to no consistent transit options, and they’re coming from transit deserts (think a healthcare worker in Bayside going to a hospital in LES at 11pm).
This is curable by operating more frequent trains. For example, the PATCO “Speedline” from Center City Philadelphia to Lindenwold, NJ provides much better off peak service than NYC area commuter rail lines. PATCO currently operates trains between 6 am and 10 pm at least every 15 minutes in each direction on weekdays, every 20 minutes on Saturdays and every 30 minutes on weekends.[3] It operates over 180 trains to or from Lindenwold on weekdays, as well as about 120 Saturday trains and over 80 trains on Sundays.
For comparison purposes, Montclair, NJ is about the same distance as the crow flies from Penn Station as Lindenwold, NJ is from Philadelphia City Hall, approximately 13 miles. The Montclair State University station is served by about 65 weekday trains.[4] On weekends and holidays, many NJ Transit trains stop short of the State University station, at Bay Street (Montclair), where a total of about 30 weekend trains stop or originate.[5]
How does PATCO provide better service? The most important factor appears to be their limited staffing. They operate two, four or six car automated trains, each with a single attendant. Fare collection is by ticket or card entering and leaving the stations.[6]
Interior of a PATCO car
Interestingly, the percentage of PATCO operating expenses for labor (72.0%) is similar to those of the LIRR (72.1%) and Metro North (72.6%).[7] The difference between these rail operations appears to be that PATCO uses its employees in a more rider-friendly way.
The objective of transit planners and workers should be “more trains with less staff per train.”
Reliability and Comfort
Americans love their automobiles, and—in my opinion—rightly so. I love driving on the open road to the beaches of Long Island or New Jersey, or the Hudson Highlands, or around Manhattan. But, like most drivers, I hate sitting still or moving slowly in traffic.
Commuting by car is great, if there is no traffic. A comfortable seat. Potentially convenient and rapid door-to-door service. Many drivers enjoy their control over their environment. One commenter said, “My only reason [for driving] is because the seats in my vehicle are comfortable.” Another said that “chain smoking” was his reason for driving, while others said they drive to avoid smoking or vaping on the bus or train.
But, if there is decent public transit between my home and the city, and I can get a seat, I prefer that. No need to focus on the highway. Read a book, play with my phone, listen to music or simply take it easy. Judging from the comments I have received; many people agree with me.
Many of the strongest comments I received in response to my “Why do people drive to the city” inquiry were about perceived unreliability, for example:
· Not at the mercy of both the MTA and NJT and their unreliable service/delays/ cancellations, etc. NJT is even worse than the MTA in that respect….
· Bus stops reliably running after rush hour. I save about 20-30 mins each way driving in depending on the time of day.
· Off peak and weekend Staten Island express buses can simply suck. There are only four routes. The 1c and 4c are generally reliable. But the 33c and 3c can have more cancellations than actual buses running.
· NJ transit is unreliable on the weekends and is often 10-20 minutes late.
· People who drive to the city have a vehicle for a reason. Why would or should they ride unreliable PATH and NJ Transit (Bus or Train) to NYC?
It does not take many bad transit trips to cause someone to begin driving instead. For example, one commenter said, “After a couple of trips in a row having to stand the whole way, I switched to driving in.” A friend was told that, if he was late again—which was due to MetroNorth trains being “annulled”—he would be terminated. When public transportation fails us on even one leg of a journey, we often decide to drive—possibly buying a commuter car—and are unlikely to return to public transportation for years.
Transit agencies, as well as transit workers and their unions, should prioritize reliability.
Transit Deserts & Poor Connections
A significant problem with transit is that riders are at the mercy of the schedules and limited or non-existent service in transit deserts. In contrast, one automobile driver told me, “If you drive, you can leave whenever you want.”
While transit connections are good within the congestion pricing district of Manhattan, service and connections at the other end of a trip are likely to be poor. One suburbanite wrote:
“While NYC has great transit and we get around the city without issue, the lack of transit on the other end can be quite damning. Even getting to certain places in Metro North territory can require trying to catch a bus that comes every 1-2 hours, meaning only a handful of trains give enough time to make the times line up nicely for that connection, or then you have the issue of last mile where the bus may not get you close enough to your final destination and it's still too far to walk.”
I had a similar experience when I commuted from Manhattan to a job in Clifton, NJ. My outgoing bus often would arrive late at the Port Authority Bus Terminal (due to delays in the Lincoln Tunnel), and the connecting bus in New Jersey was infrequent and did not have a coordinated schedule. As a result, when I used transit, I often had to walk a half mile in the street to or from my job. I car pooled when I could.
Other comments on this topic included:
· Places like Southern Brooklyn and parts of Queens are transit deserts. It’s a 20 to 30-minute bus ride just to get to the nearest train station. Forget about weekends….”
· Transit desert. Bus stops reliably running after rush hour. I save about 20-30 mins each way driving in depending on the time of day.
The proposed Interborough Express line may relieve the transit desert problem in parts of Brooklyn and Queens; however, that would be only a chip out of the iceberg. A potential, partial solution is better coordination of connecting services. In Japan, for example, many trains are met by buses, which have arrived a few minutes before the train and leave a few minutes after the train departs. Another way to alleviate the transit desert problem is improved parking, as discussed in the next section.
Parking
Availability and proximity of parking to a rail station can be an important factor in deciding whether or not to drive to the city, especially when the rider/driver lives in a transit desert. If free street parking is available near the city destination, for example—on weekends, a person is more likely to drive into the city. If parking is not predictably available at a NYC outer borough or suburban train station, a person also is more likely to drive into the city.
While providing parking at train stations is an anathema to some planners (who prefer local transit), convenient parking has been successful in attracting rider to the trains. One example is the large parking lots and garages at the Ronkonkoma, Long Island Railroad station. According to the operator of the PATCO Speedline, “Parking is available for over 12,500 cars daily at 7 NJ stations.”[8] The PATCO station parking cost is $1 from 5-10 am and free thereafter. Availability of station parking probably makes a major contribution to ridership on that line. (I would be interested in learning whether the 600-space parking garage adjacent the new Wawa station on the SEPTA system, on US Route 1, has attracted riders to the Media-Wawa commuter rail line to Philadelphia, as was intended).
SEPTA Wawa Station and Garage
Cost
A significant factor for many persons driving to the city is the lower out-of-pocket cost. For example, commenters said:
· During off peak times, it’s actually cheaper to drive in from my town in NJ, even with congestion pricing. $6 parking at the NJT station, $19.50 RT train tickets, plus $5.80 for the subway each day comes out more than the $14.06 going through the Holland and $6 congestion fee after adjustment. …. I wish I had a rail option.
· For me it's only about $7 then I street park. A MTA ticket is about $23 and the times can be inconvenient. If the MTA was cheaper and quicker, I'd take that more frequently.
· Well, once you get to 2 people it often becomes cheaper to drive from parts of NJ. Cheaper everywhere at the family level.
· LIRR plus MTA bus or train is significantly more expensive for more than 2 people if you already have a car lying around.
· $66 for 3 of us to take NJ Transit to Penn. $22 to park at Newport Mall in Jersey City and then $16.75 to take PATH to and from Manhattan.
· Family of 4 in a car is much cheaper than a family of 4 on a MetroNorth train.
· Costwise, it’s often cheaper for occasional visits to drive and pay to park than it is to buy round trip train tickets for the whole family.
· I'm in Westchester. If I want to take my family of 4 to the American Museum of Natural History, I could take the Metro North to Grand Central and then transfer to the subway. Metro North is $9.75 and subway is $2.90 per person per trip. For 4 people roundtrip, that's a whopping $50.60. I'm much better off driving and paying for parking/tolls/gas.
· I drive an EV so even with charging at home ($35-$40/month) + tolls ($16 per day due to Holland Tunnel/EV discount and congestion pricing), it’s much cheaper for me to drive since my public transit commute from my town to my job in LIC will be about $29 per day. (NJT + MTA).
The fact that out-of-pocket costs dominated the comparisons, not including other costs of automobile ownership, should be considered by transit planners.
Group peak tickets, especially for off-peak hours, also should be considered. As one person wrote:
I used to live in Germany and they had 5-person group tickets that were about half the price of 5 individual tickets for this exact reason. It made it much easier to choose the train over driving. It was only for regional trains, … but that would basically be the equivalent of MNR/LIRR/NJT here.
This article expresses the personal views of the author and does not express the views of his employer, or any client or organization. The author has degrees in law and physics, and has taken several engineering courses. After five years of work as an engineer, he has practiced law primarily in the field of patents for over 50 years, dealing with a wide variety of technologies. He is a life-long railfan and user of public transportation in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Most of the responses I received on this subject are attached to this article.
As usual a PDF copy of this article is attached.
[1] © John Pegram, 2025.
[2] Comments have been edited slightly for clarity.
[3] https://www.ridepatco.org/pdf/PATCO_Timetable_2025-04-03.pdf.
[4] https://content.njtransit.com/sites/default/files/MC-WKDY-020325%20(002)_0.pdf.
[5] https://content.njtransit.com/sites/default/files/MC-WKND-111024.pdf.
[6] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATCO_Speedline; https://www.ridepatco.org/; https://www.drpa.org/patco/.
[7] See https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/transit-agency-profiles.
