NYC visit - car, train, or other - stress free?
 

Have joined this forum after searching for best options to explore NYC (Manhattan specifically) without finding a good solution for a great stress free experience. Wife and I are traveling New England area with our vehicle this October and want to visit NYC as long as we will be in the area. Because I have heard of all the traffic issues in NYC I was hoping to find a hotel outside of NYC, park the car, and travel into NYC Manhattan area either on a tour, or an easy bus or subway route. Not opposed to walking long stretches. I am not opposed to a hotel in Manhattan area either but with parking and traffic I assume this would be a high stress process. So looking for what options there might be to enjoy Manhattan without having to deal with traffic and parking. Is there an option to park outside of NYC at a parking ramp/building and take a shuttle into Manhattan? We could then stay at a hotel in Manhattan.

Driving into Manhattan and parking at/near your hotel isn't an big issue as long as you avoid peak traffic times or bottleneck areas. The cost will be high - a few years ago private garages near hotels ran something like $50 per night. Every hotel will have some kind of arrangement for parking. You don't need valet or in/out priveleges as you won't be using a car to get around NYC. Coming from New England, you have a few routes into Manhattan. On the east side is the FDR Drive, which is a highway connected to I-87/NYS thruway. On the west side is the Henry Hudson Parkway, which also connects to the labrynth of freeways north of the city. If your hotel is on the west side, use HH, if its more on the east, use the FDR.

As for parking & staying outside the city and taking bus or train or subway into the city every day, IMO that is a horrible idea and the most stressful of any of the options. You'll really want to have a hotel nearby that you can stop back in for an afternoon rest, or clean up before dinner out.

The 3rd option is parking your car outside the city and then taking a train or bus into Manhattan to a hotel. The key question is where will you be headed after your NYC visit. There are numerous places along the Amtrak line (Norwalk, New Haven, etc) where you could park for a few days. Or along one of the Metro North RR lines (Brewster, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Tarrytown, etc). That would add the time and hassle of train, then taxi from Grand Central or Penn Station to your hotel, but it's not a bad option if you want to do that. If you area headed back to New England, then parking north of the City as I stated above could work. If you're headed south, then parking closer in - eg Tarrytown, would get you on your way south faster.

If you have a rental car, then you could return your car at a local office near your hotel in Manhattan.

J62, you beat me by a couple of minutes so I'll just edit my response down and say to rmeyerblue: Welcome to Fodors

What you heard about traffic in Manhattan is 100% true. It can be horrendous.

The other thing you mentioned the subway, just note it does not go outside of the NYC limits

I don't know about stressfree for anything, but for commuting to the north, just Google New York Metro North Railroad and you'll see the map going north to lots of towns, heading down to Grand Central, I guess.

In NYC, I don't think you can get parking for $50 in midtown. YOu probably could from upper Central Park northward. I think below that, it might be more like $60-$75 a day, or even more. The Edison HOtel charges $75 valet, $61 selfpark. the Beacon Hotel north of LIncoln Ctr charges about $75 valet and no other option.

The Aloft Harlem hotel (a Marriott), for example, is near the 125th St subway station as well as an M10 bus stop. Their valet parking is $53 a day and I think if you use a parking app/website etc, you could probalby find a spot not too far away for more like $35-40. Just use Spothero or something to check it out.

Parking at the Union Station Garage in New Haven is $18.00 a night. Off-Peak fares on MetroNorth one way to Grand Central are $17.75 ($11.75 if you qualify for a senior rate).

parking outside Manhattan and having to commute in each day would be the most stressful and least enjoyable option for me. I would book a hotel in Manhattan and park there. I wouldn't use my car while in Manhattan but to me, the cost of the parking would be worth the advantage of being in Manhattan - I like to go back to the hotel for a few hours after sightseeing, rest, freshen up and then go out to dinner. I would hate having to commute back and forth.

Absolutely agree -- but the OP wanted to avoid driving in the city, so I thought, park in New Haven, train to city and stay in Manhattan. There are a lot of hotels near Grand Central.

It's New York City. You need to be prepared for some "stress".

You can certainly find parking in Manhattan for less than $50 per day.!

We can go into that later;I live in midtown Manhattan and pay nothing close to $50 per day for 24 hour parking.


BUT....refresh my memory..do you need to tke the car into NYC or can you just come in by train or bus? Where are you coming from and where are you going from Manhattan?

That's certainly true. When I lived in NYC I paid a mere $500 a month to the garage in my apartment building, but that was long term. Now I park for free in my driveway, but no longer have access to Citarella and Schaller and Weber.

My advice to you is to park at the Hudson New York Amtrak station and take one of the 4 or 5 Empire Service trains before noon in to New York Penn station. Take the subway from there to wherever you need to go in the city. My last trip into NYC was in October 2001 about 5 weeks after 9/11. I arrived on the first Northeast Regional of the day from Washington DC. I transferred to the Maple Leaf and that night I slept in Toronto. The train from Hudson to NYP is 2 hours plus or minus 10 minutes.

Where you stay and what you plan to do in NYC depends on where you are going after NYC. Are you planning to go back to New England or are you flying home from NYC? Also how many days you might have for this trip. Some Metro North stations might not allow overnight parking, while others do. For example you could park in Stamford or Norwalk, train into Grand Central and stay in a hotel in midtown for a few days or a week and then train back to Stamford. That makes sense if you are driving back to New England for example but not if you are leaving NYC to go south to Philly or Washington.