Ken, My what a brave man you are!!!!!  And what, may I ask, is the make of
your current chariot?  I should want a Morris mini if I had to actually
park in NYC.  Or the cute little Vespa a friend had in high school.  I have
acually driven through NYC, but only late at night and only to get to the
other side.  But not for at least 30 years.  We used to have friends who
lived in Little Ferry, NJ and the only way we could figure out to get there
was through the City.  But we never went through the City coming home,  go
figure?  Ruth




At 8:29 AM -0500 2/15/02, Ken Follett wrote:
In a message dated 2/13/2002 6:01:51 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

Do you guys drive?  I have known a few people who lived there and they were
young and they didn't even have licenses or know how to drive.  Is that
usual?



Ruth,

Many Manhattanites do not drive. Often they will have a car in storage (in
a paid for parking space in a parking garage) that they use on weekends to
clog up the roads leading out of the city. It is not a total joke to say
that for many Manhattanites the outdoors is the distance from the front
door of their building to the taxi.

Alas, NYC is not limited to the island of Manhattan. In the outer boroughs
the natives tend to drive. Of everyone I know raised in the outer boroughs
they find the public transportation system to be a befuddling maze and they
prefer to drive everywhere. I have a very difficult time getting my
co-workers to use the subways.

Getting around in Manhattan via public transportation, be it taxi, subway,
bus or walking is quite efficient and usually safe. Using public
transportation in the outer boroughs, particularly if you have to move say
from Staten Island to Queens to the Bronx in one day (notice that I do not
mention how often I get lost driving in NJ), as might happen for someone in
construction; public transportation takes a great deal of time and energy,
moreso than if one drives their own vehicle which also provides the
convenience of a mobile office. There are places in the outer boroughs
where one gets to go where security is an issue and having a sturdy metal
container to move around in is desirable.

Rudy mentions my aversion to having my vehicle parked at subway stations.
Having had one vehicle stolen when it was parked in front of my assumed to
be safe Brooklyn residence (we imagine the buggy went to South America),
having had many break-ins into vehicles (the weirdest one being when they
stole my lunch, broke the passenger window, and I had to drive in a snow
storm north of the city then over to CT then across the sound on a ferry --
a COLD trip), having had people run their vehicles into the side front or
rear of my vehicles -- I'm sensitive to the vagaries of sudden vehicular
loss. I won't even go into the problems I had several years ago with the
insurance investigators and the mob related body shop.

If you own a vehicle in NYC you can go one of two ways... make sure that it
looks like a total piece of garbage with the hope that nobody will touch
it, or own something really nice but keep it locked up and secure when not
in use.

I drive, putting in 650 miles per week in commuting, let alone driving in
any and all boroughs including Manhattan.

][<en

--
Ruth Barton
[log in to unmask]
Westminster, VT

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