Triangle Trip

If you’re visiting New York or get on the New York City subway or bus (MTA) at least four times a day, we highly recommend you get an unlimited ride Metrocard. For the visitors, you may want to checkout my previous blog to see NYC in a day (or two).

There are unlimited Metrocards for daily, weekly and monthly use. The published terms and conditions for an unlimited Metrocard are:

1. You cannot use the unlimited Metrocard within 18 minutes of your previous use (also known as “swipe”).

2. You cannot swipe in other passengers for a fee.

These terms don’t prohibit you from swiping your friends in for free. And, the 18 minute hold on your Metrocard only applies to the station you swiped in at. If you go to another station (NOT another turnstile across the street for the same station; an entirely different station), or a bus, you can swipe your unlimited card again, before the 18 minutes is up.

Below is an example of how you could maximize the use of your unlimited Metrocard (see map for reference):

1.  Swipe your friend in at Astor Place for the 6 train.
2.  Walk one block over to the 8th Street station and swipe in to get on the N, R or W train.
3.  Use the same card to get on the M6 bus to go down Broadway.

Here’s what you cannot do:

1.  Swipe your friend in at Astor Place for the 6 train.
2.  Walk one block over to the 8th Street station and swipe in.
3.  Go back to Astor Place for the 6 train. Unless 18 minutes passed between step 1 and 3, the card won’t work.

You can, however, walk up to the Union Square 14th Street station to reuse the same Metrocard.

Hope this helped you maximize the usage of your Metrocard. You may want to use this opportunity to check out all the skating rinks in NYC – check out Omnifarious’ previous post.

The Triangle Trip Gang would like to wish their readers and fans a very Prosperous Lunar New Year; Happy Valentines Day; and Great President’s Day!

For those visiting Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics, you may want to check out our previous post on where the locals eat. We have Vancouver restaurant recommendations for the following cuisines:  Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French and other great seafood restaurants. Vancouver is one of the best places to visit to eat!

I recently discovered that the minimum time for baggage check before plane departure is set by the individual airports, not by the airlines.  Delta’s JFK staff has a one hour prior to departure bag check policy, while Delta’s SFO staff has a 30 minute prior to departure bag check rule. Unfortunately, I learned this as a result of a bag check incident at JFK that led to me missing my flight for only the third time in my 10+ years of traveling (previous post).

Why does JFK need an extra half hour? Although JFK is definitely busier than SFO from Delta’s standpoint, there were probably 3x the amount of Delta employees at JFK versus SFO. Does it really take 2x the amount of time to load up bags at JFK vs SFO?

I believe the minimum time for baggage check before departure is in place to gives airlines and baggage handlers enough time to get the bags onto the planes; it certainly should not be a hard and steadfast rule to prevent passengers from checking in their baggage after the deadline. Baggage handlers are professionals and should do whatever they can to accommodate passengers, especially when airlines are charging passengers up to $30 to check in each extra bag.

For your reference, here’s Delta’s published prior to departure bag check time for each major airport in the US: