WHEELY GOOD TIME: Michael Owens enjoys sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline as he bikes over the Brooklyn Bridge to work. (
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For the millions of office-goers based in the Big Apple, the trek to and from work can be a time-sucking, anxiety-inducing fact of professional life. According to a report released by the Partnership for New York City earlier this month, the average public-transportation commute clocks in at a whopping 48 minutes — one of the longest in the nation.
But not all New Yorkers dread their daily commutes. Here, @work speaks with three NYC employees who actually relish their rush-hour rides.
Bikes up to 30 miles a day
When Michael Owens traded his subway card for a bicycle four years ago, the impetus was a desire for daily exercise.
An increased workload was making it “tougher and tougher to get to the gym every day,” says the freelance content strategist and communications consultant. Despite prior cycling experience, “I figured I’d buy a bike and give it a shot,” says the 36-year-old.
But the Carroll Gardens resident has found he gets more than an endorphin rush from his 40-minute, 7-mile commute to the Midtown West office where his current full-time contract gig is based.
“I get to see parts of the city most people never get to see if they’re just going from point A to point B,” he says. “I try to take different routes each day.”
While his morning and evening travel always include zipping across the Brooklyn Bridge, the Queens native finds himself pedaling to meetings all across Manhattan — providing ample opportunity to stray from the city’s “monotonous” bike lanes and explore more scenic side streets — such as the bike lane that runs down Ninth Avenue in Chelsea through the West Village onto Bleecker Street.
“I pass by restaurants or bars and I’ll make a point to go back and visit them,” he says. He discovered a current favorite, West Village restaurant Bell Book & Candle, on one such back-roads ride.
“I never would have found this place if I took the subway each day,” he says.
But Owens insists his joyriding rarely demands a post-ride shower or a change of clothes. In fact, the only time he leaves his bike home is when the forecast calls for all-day rain or snow — or if he has to wear a suit.
“I actually find myself a sweaty mess after waiting on a subway platform or being packed in a car during rush hour,” he shrugs. “There is no body odor to deal with in the bike lanes.”
Another surprising improvement over the standard subway commute? “How friendly and open bike commuters are with one another,” he says. “At red lights, I often find myself chatting with strangers, which is something I would never do on a subway.”
Still, wheeling to work isn’t always a smooth ride.
Owens says he had to get used to aggressive city drivers, like cabbies who cut into the bike lane and forced him onto the sidewalk. He also survived a few near-death experiences, including the time, two years ago, a car blew a stop sign in Brooklyn Heights and sent a hard-braking Owens over his handlebars and into the street. (He was fortunate enough to walk away with only minor scratches.)
A few months ago, his bike was swiped on Wall Street — prompting Owens to chain his new ride on the street with two heavy-duty locks. He also finds himself worrying about where to leave his bike in the event that impromptu happy-hour plans pop up.
But on the rare occasion that Owens has a big night out — sans bike, for safety reasons — he doesn’t dread his morning trek to the office.
“It’s the best cure for a hangover,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than being hungover on a crowded train. It’s a lot better to get out there and breathe some fresh air.”
Will read 150 books this year on bus, train and ferry (inset left)
If a daily three-hour round-trip commute sounds like a nightmare, don’t tell Elyse Tanzillo. After more than a decade of trekking from Grymes Hill, Staten Island, to work in Manhattan, the 35-year old executive assistant has learned that the right routine — and frame of mind — can make the bus-ferry-train trip something of a retreat.
“A one-and-a-half-hour commute means I have lots of reading time,” says Tanzillo, who works at Alexander Interactive, a Flatiron digital agency. The self-described “huge fiction junkie” spends the bus and train segments plowing through her latest bookstore finds — including Christopher Moore’s irreverent “Lamb” (“I probably read a book in two days,” she says).
Once she “fights her way onto” the 8 a.m. boat, it’s time for Tanzillo’s other morning ritual: a 20-minute catnap to make up for the Z’s she loses with her 5 a.m. alarm. With an iPod playlist loaded with Joe Cocker and Aretha Franklin tunes, Tanzillo has no problem conking out.
“You wake up the second before the overhead announcement that the ferry is about to dock,” she explains. “After you’ve done the commute so long, you kind of know when that is. It’s like an internal clock.”
And while the boat trips are no longer as “magical” as the ones she remembers from childhood trips in the city, there’s still a certain novelty in traveling by sea.
“You kind of get used to seeing all of the tourist sites, but there is something really calming about being on the water,” she says. Plus, “I love telling out-of-towners I take a boat to work.”
Tanzillo concedes not every day is smooth sailing: If she misses one segment of her commute, it can stretch to a whopping two hours — and she has to resist the urge to curse slow-moving tourists in her way.
“If you start thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, can’t these people walk faster?’ it drains you for the rest of the day,” she says. “It’s all about keeping calm — and remembering no matter what I do, or how angry I get, I’m going to get there when I get there — so I take out my book, and just breathe.”
Has a mobile office in his own set of wheels (inset center)
By the time James Pearson arrives at his desk at BrightLine, a Midtown West advertising technology agency, he has already caught up on e-mails, listened to new ad demos and fired off texts to his team — all while behind the wheel of his black 2006 Porsche Cayenne.
“I’m allowed to be more productive, when I’m actually just moving myself to and from work,” the communications executive, 46, says of his office-on-wheels setup. “It gives me more time to do what I do.”
A native of Ohio (“where we drive from the kitchen to the dining room,” he quips), Pearson has been chauffeuring himself to work ever since 9/11, when a struggle to get a cab spurred him to buy his own ride.
But when he took a job in Wayne, NJ, immediately afterward, Pearson realized the true value of a cruise-control commute: It gave him valuable uninterrupted time to catch up on work calls and industry news.
Nowadays, the Clinton Hill resident embarks on a 30- to 45-minute drive each morning and uses the road time to get a head start on his workday. With his iPhone connected to the car’s interface, Pearson uses the Dragon Dictation app to listen and respond to e-mails, take in the audio transcript of the book his CEO is writing, and create voice-to-text notes on it.
It’s technology, he says, that “would have been a fantasy in my mom’s 1975 LTD.”
Midtown gridlock — and the occasional cabbie cutoff — is par for the course. So is the ribbing of friends (“They tell me I am not invited to Earth Day parties”) and the costs of two separate garages, which carry a combined damage of $325 — about $200 more than a monthly MTA pass.
But Pearson says it’s a small price to pay to be connected and productive for his entire round-trip.
“There have been so many times when there’s been breaking stories, and if I’d been in transit on the subway, I would have missed it,” he says.
It’s also good news for the his Brooklyn-based co-workers who’ve hitched rides with Pearson during mass-transit lockdowns, like during and after Hurricane Sandy.
“You name any major snowstorm or weather event in the last five years, and we’ve been in the office,” he says of his colleagues who live in the neighborhood.
And yet his favorite part of the trek has nothing to do with business.
“I’m not going to lie,” he says. “After the work is done, I turn up ‘Hang Fire’ by the Rolling Stones.”