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Interactive Maps Show Commuting Times from NYC's Neighborhoods

By Nicole Levy | March 31, 2016 1:56pm | Updated on March 31, 2016 5:16pm

Commuting in New York City is such a wretched endeavor that the number of New Yorkers avoiding it altogether climbed 68 percent from 2000 to 2014, a new study by the Center for an Urban Future has found.

The telecommuters were concentrated in six neighborhoods defined by the 2014 U.S. Census: Upper West Side, Park Slope/Carroll Gardens, Chelsea/Clinton/Midtown, Stuyvesant Town/Turtle Bay, Greenwich Village/Financial District and Brooklyn Heights/Fort Greene.

Just under 4 percent of the city's employed population chose to work remotely in 2014, according to a report published Thursday.

That breaks down to 1,686,296 New Yorkers choosing to telecommute in 2000, and 2,149,687 opting to work remotely in 2014, according to Census data.

These workers avoided the more-than-40-minute commute that 69 percent of New Yorkers endure.

Credit: Center for an Urban Future

That average commute time far and away eclipses the national average, 26 minutes.

The ten New York neighborhoods with the longest commutes, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey, won't come as any surprise: the Rockaways (53 minutes), Jamaica (51 minutes), Bellerose/Rosedale (47 minutes), and Howard Beach/S. Ozone Park (46 minutes) in Queens; Brownsville/Ocean Hill (48 minutes), Flatlands/Canarsie (48 minutes), East Flatbush (46 minutes) and Bensonhurst (45 minutes) in Brooklyn; and Kingsbridge Heights/Mosholu (46 minutes) and Soundview/Parkchester (46 minutes) in the Bronx.

More intriguing is the finding that, despite Manhattan's reputation as the center of the universe, New Yorkers living elsewhere are actually more likely to commute within their own borough. That holds true throughout the city, but particularly in Brooklyn, where 49 percent of residents work in their home borough compared to 37 percent who work in Manhattan, and in Staten Island, where the ratio is 52 to 22 percent.

chart

Other fun factoids to take away include: 

► The neighborhood with the highest share of bicycle commuters is the Lower East Side/Chinatown, where six percent of commuters bike to work. (We suspect many of them have Citi Bike memberships.)

► Most public administrators are definitely not administrating in their home neighborhoods, with an average commute of 48 minutes.

► New York City may be a mass transit town, but in 10 of the city's 55 Census-defined neighborhoods — 3 in Staten Island, six in eastern Queens and one in the Bronx — more commuters rely on cars or taxis more than any other mode of transportation.