Think about your daily commute. Now imagine doing the exact same trip every week\u2014for years.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the reality for one Passaic County woman, whose routine trip into Manhattan has become a finely tuned part of her daily life.<\/p>\n
Three days a week, like clockwork, Lauren Pinto boards the New Jersey Transit 193 bus outside the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne.<\/p>\n
“It’s routine… just like brushing your teeth. Just another thing to do in the morning,” Pinto says.<\/p>\n
Pinto has been taking the bus for the past five years, but she has been commuting for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
She makes the trip\u2014timing it down to the minute. What\u2019s supposed to be a 36-minute bus ride, she says, is often much longer.<\/p>\n
“This is a little extra red, we will hit the bus lane right over [Interstate] 95, so that will help, but it will still be an hour, though,” says Pinto.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the morning commute that\u2019s tough.<\/p>\n
“There’s no bus lane coming home…It’s an hour and a half easy door to door,” Pinto says. “If I leave my office at 45th and 6th at 5 p.m. on the dot and I walk very quickly, I am in a line by 5:16 p.m. I will not get home before 6:40 p.m….It’s New York\/New Jersey, it’s congested. There’s no way around it.”<\/p>\n
Despite the long hours, Pinto says some trade-offs make taking the bus worthwhile.<\/p>\n
“The idea of sitting in traffic, gas, tolls, having to be completely aware of everyone around me on the road, and I’m sitting here, my emails are cleaned out. I can take a little catnap if I want. I will be at the mercy of NJ Transit, just for the convenience of it,” Pinto says.<\/p>\n
After more than an hour on the bus, the ride into Port Authority is only part of the journey. Pinto still has a nearly three-quarter-mile walk to her office.<\/p>\n
She says the most difficult part of commuting isn\u2019t just the distance\u2014it\u2019s the time lost, especially in the evenings.<\/p>\n
“It’s time, especially on the way home, where I’m not with family, and they are on the receiving end of a really bad commute,” she says.<\/p>\n
For Pinto, commuting isn\u2019t just about getting from point A to point B. It\u2019s a rhythm\u2014filled with familiar faces, daily routines and occasional delays. While it may seem like a lot, she says she\u2019s learned to embrace it.<\/p>\n
“Necessary evil. It’s not the worst thing in the world, you get used to it,” Pinto says. “Some people even enjoy it. I like my time in the morning sometimes. I just wish it wasn’t at 7 a.m.”<\/p>\n
By the time she reaches Midtown, her 1-hour-and-20-minute commute is finally behind her. She says it\u2019s more than just a routine\u2014it\u2019s the clock that keeps her week on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Think about your daily commute. Now imagine doing the exact same trip every week\u2014for years. That\u2019s the reality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-221752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}