Travelling from East to West Coast
 

Hi All! Myself and 4 of my friends are thinking of going to Long Island for a J1 next summer but would like to travel to the west coast in August. Any advice on the quickest/cheapest form of travel? We all have Irish drivers licences if that is any help as we don't mind taking turns driving if that is the best option.

Do not know what a J1 is.

Cheapest/quickest form of travel depends on your itinerary.

How much time do you have for the trip?

What places are your must see?

Getting from NY to CA - with no stops the fastest and cheapest is obviously flying - with tickets bought far in advance.

Train cross country is not an option in the US. Except for the NE corridor (Boston down through DC) the train tracks are owned by the freight companies and their trains take precedence over passenger ones. Many places are not served by passenger trains at all, onces that are often have only one train per day, they are often late - many hours late, and often cost more than flying.

Buses are fairly cheap - but stations are often in the wrong end of town and they arrive many places in the middle of the night. Plus, most are not very comfortable and rides can be interminable.

Driving is fine is you are more than 25 and sharing costs between several drivers (but you have to pay more for each one). If you are under 25 it can be difficult to find an agency and they will charge a premium - often significant. If you are under 21 you may not find anyone to rent you a car. If you plan on doing this you should arrange in advance from Ireland to get better rates that will include insurance (which if very expensive here - most people rely on their own insurance or the free coverage provided by their CCs).

You don;t say where you will be on Long Island - but this is either a massive suburb - not really negotiable without a car - or a resort area (the far end) - ditto. There is train service into an out of Manhattan, also a couple of large coach companies, but local transit is sparse and usually inconvenient - esp after 6 pm. Also lodging on the far end for summer can be extremely expensive and there are often local rules agains more than 2 or 3 unrelated adults living together. Vacation rentals are usually made by groups in March or early April at latest.

If you can clarify your plans people can provide a lot more useful info.

What nytraveler said. And there are busses that go cross country and some have fairly low costs. There was a TR here from a woman who took busses across part of Canada and the US and stopped in cities along the way that has hostels to stay in for less money.

With four drivers if you could get a rental car it might be less expensive to rent a car and stop at an occasional hostel along your route. You need to research the options for costs, and flying will by far be the fastest, driving a rental car will probably be the next. All of the rental cars I've used charge by the number of days you use and don't charge for miles travelled.

That said I would not want to drive cross country without stopping to see some of the fantastic sites along the way, so for me it would not be the fastest or cheapest option, but if you just drove changing drivers and sleeping in the car it might be.

Do you mean a J1 visa?????

Anyway . . . ditto what was said above. No way to help you w/o more info. How long, your ages, etc.

I will disagree with the earlier advice.

Amtrak from New York to Chicago
Chicago to either San Francisco or Los Angeles.

If you're on vacation and you have the time don't worry about train delays. So what? Maybe you'll get lucky and have to stay in Chicago overnight. The most beautiful/fun city in US.

You can always rent a car at the west coast train depot and continue with your journey, rested, fed, and meantime enjoy each others company playing cards, games, have a drink and watch movies in the lounge car, etc. etc.

The plus side is the fact that you'll be able to see different sides of US right through the windows.

JMHO

Have a great trip!

Here is an example for 4 adults.

<I>
$892.00 USD




Tuesday, May 12, 2015
New York to Washington
9:35 am - 1:00 pm
3 hr, 25 min

141 Northeast Regional (Amenities)
4 Reserved Coach Seats


Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Washington to Chicago
4:05 pm - 8:45 am (Wed, May 13)
17 hr, 40 min

29 Capitol Limited (Amenities)
4 Reserved Coach Seats


Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Chicago to Los Angeles
3:00 pm - 8:15 am (Fri, May 15)
43 hr, 15 min

3 Southwest Chief (Amenities)
4 Reserved Coach Seats



VALUE

4 Adult

$892.00

4 Reserved Coach Seats

included

Subtotal

$892.00



Terms & Conditions

Total

$892.00 </I>

Spending 64 hours sitting in a Coach Seat? No thanks.

Here are some prices based on 5 people per OP (Myself and 4 of my friends)

Train is $1115 total. 3 days minimum to travel assuming no delays

Greyhound: from New York to LA is $168.50 per person, total of $842.50. 2 days and 18 hours travel time, again assuming no delays

Rental car: ~3000 miles at 30 miles per gallon and $4/gallon = $400. Add in a bare minimum of $200 if you sleep in a cheap motel for 4 nights plus add the cost of the one-way rental additional driver fees and it's safe to say you're over $1000. 40+ hours of driving.

Airfare: Southwest has one-ways for $167 from LGA to LAX. Total of $855. Travel time is 8 hours.

Summary....
Fly: $855 arrive in 8 hours
Bus: $842.50 arrive in 66 hours (assuming no delays)
Train: $1115 arrive in 64 hours (assuming no delays)
Drive: $1000+, arrive in 4-5 days

This is not complicated. Fly there. Driving is the only reasonable alternative if you have lots of time, can find a decent one-way rental price including additional driver fees and want to make stops along the way.

One correction: it should read Southwest has one-ways for $171 from LGA to LAX, not $167.

That $892 will only get you from NY to the West Coast. You have to figure in the cost (time + dollars) of getting back east, whether you do train, car, or airplane.

Flying from NY to California (San Francisco or LA) takes 6 hours in the air plus the time getting to the airport plus 2 hours for the security line, check-in, etc. Say 10 hours altogether. One-way flights on Virgin America, Southwest, etc. run about $160 and up. A roundtrip will run around $375-450 or more.

But the big question--why Long Island?

There is nothing like a drive across the country. Driving from NY to California takes 4+ brutal days IF you share the driving and stop mainly for overnight stays along the way; much more fun if you have, say, 12 days so you can route through some of the beautiful national and state parks and small towns along the way. I've heard that if you're from out of the country you may be able to get a one-way rental without a drop-off charge. Maybe? Check around with some of the rental agencies. Also figure an additional $400 or so for gas. You would still likely want to fly back to NY, so figure that in too.

Thanks so much to everyone who replied! It's my first time posting on these kind of sites ever so really appreciate all the help and speedy answers. A J1 is when students get a visa to work in the USA for 10 weeks. We are Irish students but only 20-21 so driving might be very expensive as we are under 25. Long Island seemed like a chilled spot and close enough to New York for a visit without living in a big city (this is purely going on reviews from other J1ers!).

Really appreciate all the help!

Long Island (no including Brooklyn and Queens, which are two of the boroughs - counties - in NYC) consists of Nassau county - ALL suburbia with a lot of wall to wall traffic and Suffolks. The western end of Suffolk is similar to Nassau - all suburbia - while the easter end is mostly resorts - with a mix of vinyards and some smaller towns. This is the Hamptons - which is incredibly expensive from end of May through the middle of September - and very slow the rest of the year.

The only areas that are near NYC (within an hour or so by train) are all suburbia. And in these ara local college students are looking NOW for summer jobs using all of their parents connections - and will be living in parents houses and riving their cars. For you to compete would be very difficult - housing close to impossible to find and getting around without a car next to impossible.

The Hamptons are more like 3 hours away - with 2 trains per day - and not a place for working students to find a place to live - unless it comes with the job in a resort - and then plan on bunk beds in a shed.

What type of work are you looking for? Have you identified any opportunities yet? If as wait staff or resort/hotel workers - the seasonal ones often come back year after year. And some are illegal immigrants living in very unpleasant conditions.

What specific parts of Long Island are you looking it? (It is 110 miles long and more than 7 million people live there.)

The USA Rail Pass (15, 30 or 45 day) is available to foreign nationals. Link: http://www.amtrak.com/take-the-train...-usa-rail-pass
Once you get to Chicago on the Lake Shore Limited, you have several choices on the west coast (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco or Los Angeles. The Coast Starlight travels between Seattle and Los Angeles.
My advice would be to break up the trip with a stop somewhere west of Chicago. My favorite stop on the California Zephyr is Glenwood Springs Colorado. On the Empire Builder it's Whitefish Montana and on the Southwest Chief it's Albuquerque New Mexico.
You get to see a lot more cities and scenery by riding trains instead of flying coast to coast.

>>You get to see a lot more cities and scenery by riding trains instead of flying coast to coast.<<

I've driven from LA to Indiana (for college) and back 9 times. I thought the drive was very boring - compared to what I've seen in Europe, Calif Coast & mountains, & New England. My FIL took the Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco area to visit us a couple of years ago and remarked how flat & boring the stretch was between about St Louis & Denver.

To LoRaynx - explore the New York & New England area, fly to Calif, and explore the Big Sur coast, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, and Yosemite/Sierra Nevada mountains. That's what I would spend my valuable time doing - not sitting in a car, train, or bus for days. If you've visited Edinborough, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Rome - the large US cities between the East Coast and San Francisco might not interest you a lot.

Stu Dudley

I agree with StuDudley, though I would add that you are likely to have a very good time going to a evening baseball game along the way. If you can't get tickets to a major league game, many minor league games ( professional only) are cheap and very good fun. I don't even like baseball, but if I were from the UK, I would enjoy seeing a game, drinking beer, and eating hot dogs.

Sorry, Ireland.

But you don't need to drive, train, or bus cross-country to see a baseball game. The World Series Champs are right here in San Francisco, and another good team is 45 mins away across the bay. Two teams in the LA area, and another in San Diego. Lots of teams on the East Coast.

>>drinking beer, and eating hot dogs.<<

I don't think this would be a new experience for someone from Ireland.

Stu Dudley

No, but it is the only way I can manage baseball, which is like curling, only slightly less exciting. I wouldn't go to a major league game if you paid me, but the Pawtucket Red Sox or Portland Sea Dogs? You betcha! ;-)

I played a lot of baseball when I was young. Never good enough for the Varsity (great at fielding, lousy at hitting) but good enough to appreciate the "art" of the game. Now, I love to watch the "majors". It's like a chess game to me. For an excellent college player to make it in the Majors, he has to spend 2-7 years in the minor leagues before he can really learn to hit a major league fastball, slider, sinker, and learn the nuanceses of their position in the field. Most never do. Some look great in the minors, & they are "brought up" to the majors after 3-5 years in the minors - and they "flame out". This year, the SF Giants needed a new Second Baseman (the position I played), and they brought up about 5 players at various times during the season, and all of them played 10-30 games before they were sent back to the minors for various reasons. The last guy they brought up exceeded expectations - by far. But nobody in the minors knew that at the time. He was really one of the "heroes" in the 20 or so games the Giants played in the playoffs. He made a defensive play in the World Series that I've never witnessed before - and I've played & watched a lot of baseball. If he hadn't made the play - the Giants would not have won the Series.

Maybe curling is as intricate as baseball, if I studied it. But there are no "Sunday Night Curling" games shown on the major TV networks that I could watch & listen to the commentary.

Stu Dudley

I know some people don;t like baseball - find it boring. That's fine - everyone has different tastes - you couldn't pay me to watch hockey.

But one must understand the beauty of the game - and the true difficulty to understand it. One of my uncles was a star athlete (triple letterman in college (running back, point guard and shortstop) as well as all sorts of other sports (gold, tennis, handball etc). He was recruited by the (then) NY Giants - but said at 25 (he went to college after air force in WWII) said he wanted to get on with his life - and 3 or 4 years in the minors was not it.

In any case he said he wouldn't have been a good enough hitter in the bigs - said the single hardest thing to do in sports is hit off a good major league pitcher.

My baseball loving friends tell me about the chess aspect or the dance of strategy etc. You all enjoy it!

But if I were an Irish visitor, I would go in a minute just for the atmosphere and experience!