In the days following Hurricane Sandy, when New York’s regional transit systems were either completely shut down or barely limping along, commuters still found a way to work — by biking more, embracing ferries, temporary “bus bridges” and HOV lanes, even leveraging social media to find rides or temporary office space.
According to a new report from New York University’s Rudin Center, the storm’s aftermath brought out a uniquely New York commuting creativity.
“In many U.S. cities, which are limited to cars, buses or other singular transportation modes,” the report states, “the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy would have, at least temporarily, crippled the economy.” Not so in New York, where residents “displayed impressive inventiveness to maintain their mobility. Individuals created new routes and combinations of modes to get to work, using a variety of systems.”
The report surveyed 315 commuters about modes of transport and commute times. That’s a small sample considering the millions of people affected. And asking a commuter to estimate how long they took to get to work can invite exaggeration, the Rudin report is an impressive attempt to quantify the chaos of ad-hoc mobility choices during the storm.
While almost everyone saw their commutes increase, Staten Islanders fared the worst. For residents of that hard-hit borough, commute times in the days following Sandy nearly tripled.
It was no picnic on the roads, either: “Commute times by private car for survey respondents nearly tripled, from an average of 47 minutes pre-Sandy to an average of 115 minutes post-Sandy.”
The report also praises New York’s MTA for keeping the public updated about service changes, and recommends the agency maintain its adaptable subway map. But other transit providers don’t come off as well: “During the Hurricane, the Port Authority [which operates the PATH train system] and NJ Transit provided remarkably limited information throughout and following the storm about their service.”
Read the full report here. See an impressive interactive timeline of Sandy’s impact on transportation.