I like poking around the web analytics back channels of Trainjotting to spot any kind of traffic irregularities. I stumbled upon one this week: Monday saw 108 page views of the Trainjotting category “Nick Paumgarten,” Paumgarten of course the author of the seminal New Yorker commuting essay. Tuesday had a 94 Paumgarten clicks, and yesterday, another 39. For the month, we’ve had 373 clicks on Paumgarten, easily the top category.

My initial thought was, that Paumgarten sure is a vain bastard, clicking on himself over and over. Then I googled ‘Nick Paumgarten,’ and it turns out the second click to come up–trailing only Paumgarten’s “There and Back Again” commuting story in the New Yorker–is none other than Trainjotting.

Yes, we seem to inadvertently seized ownership of the Nick Paumgarten ad words.

And geez, that guy sure does get a lot of people googling him.

I’m a bit behind on my reading, but wanted to mention a feature on commuting from Westchester in the January issue of InTown, the monthly mag put out by Indian Point Fined For Violations Daily…I mean the Journal News.

“Clogged roads, cramped trains. Even so, Westchester commuters are determined to be happy about their daily trip to the office,” reads the beginning of “Getting There,” by Robert Zeliger.

Of course, after Nick Paumgarten’s epic commuting piece in the New Yorker, no one should dare try to tackle the topic again, but Zeliger gives it a whirl, albeit a fairly perfunctory one. He compares the car commute versus the train commute. He finds that both parties really seem to like what they’re doing.

“I’ve spent the better part of a month talking to the city-bound,” he writes, “and almost no one expressed frustration.”

Zeliger then breaks down the respective psyches of “train people” and “car people.” About the latter, he mentions the commuters who “give you dirty looks if you’re in their seat” (O.Seat.D., in train parlance), and the barmy gal who sits in the lotus position, eyes closed and palms on thighs, across from Zeliger as he tries the schlep from Scarborough.

He points out that 85% of Manhattan-bound commuters from Westchester take the train. Regrettably, he fails to mention the 5:59 rule when parroting Metro-North’s 97.6% “on time” percentage, and adds that MNR is actually the “most on-time rail line system in the entire nation.” (Worldwide, it ranks somewhere between Tokyo’s and China’s.)

Among car people, there’s the New Rochelle guy who drives 35 minutes to his office on Wall Street (he leaves at 6:15 a.m.), then spends 70 minutes to two hours plodding home. He’s among the 33,000 cars to drive from Westchester to Manhattan each day, reports Zeliger.

Finally, Zeliger offers a sidebar on what commuting in the area might look like in the future. Three ideas under consideration: a train line over the Hudson connecting Rockland and Westchester, speed lanes on 287 and Metro-North chugging into Penn Station–so Westchesterers can enjoy the fine-dining at the Mickey D’s that used to be the men’s room, and couture shopping at KMart.

The Real Estate section of the NY Times has kicked off a month-long feature that sees the reporter try out different commutes from different corners of the Metro area. It feels a bit like Nick Paumgarten’s seminal New Yorker story on commuting — breaking down the trade-off of having a sizeable home and a mostly unpalatable schlep to work versus living in a cardboard box and being able to walk to work. But it thus far only scratches of the surface of a complex topic that Paumgarten truly nailed.  

To be honest, there’s sort of a snooty ‘I’m slumming it’ tone to the Times feature, as in, ‘Today, I ride the subway with laborers, minorities, and maybe even a homeless man to find out how 98% of the city gets around each day.”

To wit:

To explore this phenomenon, we are embarking on a mission. For the month of January, we will ride to and from work with some of the New York area’s commuting millions.

Most of us millions don’t really see it as a “mission.” We’re just going to work.

One interesting factoid reporter Billie Cohen unearths: Nearly 40% of all U.S. “transit” commuters hail in the New York Metro area. Furthermore, 25% of area residents take “transit” to get to work; Chicago is second with 11.5%.

We usually leave the book-biz scoops, such as James Frey getting a million little dollars for a new novel, to the NY Times and our friends at Publishers Weekly. But little ol’ Trainjotting has something interesting from the tweedy book world: Nick Paumgarten, author of the greatest commuting story ever told in the New Yorker, is pondering a book on commuting.

Paumgarten told Trainjotting he’s had numerous offers to do a commuting-themed book, “but I’m not sure it excites me enough.” 

Commuting not exciting enough? C’mon!!!

Nick Paumgarten has written the Magna Carta of commuting in the new New Yorker, an eight-page tome with the added bonus of a Campari ad featuring the sultry Salma Hayek smack in the middle.

Among the gems he offers up in “There and Back Again” is something I’ve been meaning to write about since Trainjotting was a mere pup: Everyone lies about their commute. “It is said that doctors, when they ask you how much you drink, will take the answer and double it,” he writes. “When a commuter says, ’It’s an hour, door-to-door,’ tack on twenty minutes.” 

Other tidbits: a Harvard scientist says every ten minutes of your commute results in 10% fewer social connections, Bronxville has what’s said to be the “perfect” commute, and the word “commute” comes from the definition “to change to another less severe,” meaning the original suburban riders 150 years ago received a reduced train rate, similar to the modern monthly pass.

Paumgarten also nails the novice commuter: “He’s rifling through pockets in search of his ticket, coffee bubbling up out the pinprick holes of his flattop lid, leading him to wonder how it is possible for the coffee to be leaking when the top is on tight. He has not strategy for newsprint stain.”

He also explains how much better train riders have it than car drivers: in short, you behave in your car the way you behave when by yourself in a room–thus, the cries of “Asshole!” when another motorist cuts you off. On a crowded train, decorum (usually) prevails.

I’m halfway through the article (something to do with that Salma Hayek ad), but will finish it later. While commuting, of course.