The Westchester section of the NY Times took on the topic of reverse commuting over the weekend in “The Big Commute, In Reverse.” The the topic has been written about a lot of late, but Ford Fessenden (is that a byline, or a long-discontinued car model?) unearths some intriguing numbers. Among them:
* Some 300,000 people live in New York City and commute to the ‘burbs.
* City residents commuting to the ‘burbs grew 12% from 2000 to 2005.
* NYC residents commuting to Long Island rose 5% during that period, New Jersey grew 14% while those commuting to jobs in Westchester and Connecticut climbed 32%.
Some of the reasons given are the escalating price of office space in the city and the emergence of workspace near mass transit in the suburbs, as opposed to the office parks (such as Dunder-Mifflin’s) that took off between 1980 and 2000, reports Fessenden.
Metro-North is credited for adding a third track to White Plains two years ago, and business groups are lobbying to add an east-west track linking Rockland County to Westchester.
The story unearths all sorts of individuals with heinous reverse commutes, and some with a less dreadful company shuttle bus ride from the train to the office, such as employees at OSI Pharmaceuticals in Farmingdale on Long Island, which runs two vans during each rush hour–sort of like the Google buses.
The company decided two years ago to try to tap the labor pool in New York City, and now a dozen of its 250 Farmingdale employees ride the train and take a shuttle from Farmingdale, and vice versa.
Dan Sherman, 39, a medicinal chemist, is one of them.
“I don’t have a car, and I don’t want a car,” said Mr. Sherman, who lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. “I don’t want to live on Long Island, but this kind of business is never in a place where I want to live.
“Company buses are a big perk,” he said. “I would have been reluctant to take this job without that.”
