NYC subway travel can be intimidating if you are not familiar with it. Here are tips and suggestins for making this experience easier.
The New York City subway system is a vast underground maze of tunnels and tracks. The NYC runs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx. There is a seperate system that travel thru Staten Island. The NYC subway is very unique for many reasons. The first reason is that it operates 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The second thing about the NYC subway system is that for a base fare you can travel the entire system without ever having to pay a second fare.
The subway is made up of routes using either letters or numbers. Presently there are 8 numbered lines and 15 lettered lines. In midtown Manhattan the system is colored coded as to the street that the lines run down.
For example, trains that run on 8th Avenue are colored blue and trains that run on 7th Ave are red: trains that run on 6th are are orange. The Lexington line is green, the Broadway line is yellow, and trains running in the Wall Street area are brown. This make travel very easy if for example you happen to board the train in Queens and want to travel to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Ave. You would need to look for a blue subway line because the 8th ave. line is blue.
The longest subway line is the 8th A train. This train travels from the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Far Rockaway Queens to the hills of Washington Heights way up on 207th street.
The A train is express during the rush hours, making limited stops in Brooklyn and in midtown Manhattan. The A train makes the longest express stop from 59th street to 125th street.
Every subway line has some sort of tourist attraction close by. The 6th line at 34th street is home to Macy's Department Store the largest department in the world. Plus it is only 2 blocks from the Empire State Building. The Broadway line is close to most Broadway theatres. The 8th avenue will drop you off at Central Park or the World Trade Center. The 7th avenue is going to take you South Ferry where you can board ferries to Ellis Ilsand or Staten Island. There is so much more than can visited by looking at a subway mao which is free from any token booth.
The fare for the subway needs to be prepaid, in the form of a token or a metrocard. A metrocard is like a debit card. You can either get a unlimited ride card for the day, week, or month. With this type of card if you want to travel for the day you can use the card all day. The other type of metrocard is the pay for ride that deducts money as you travel. As you can see, the NYC subway is an inexpensive way to travel around NYC.
