otholes, taxis, parades, construction, buses and bikers. They make getting around Manhattan about as easy as skiing in Miami. Nowhere is moving through this concrete jungle more inefficient than across the 843 acres that comprise Central Park. Going crosstown from the West Side to the East Side between 59th and 110th Street is so difficult some people have stopped doing it.

Emilio Colon, bus driver. PHOTO: Jon Gelb

"A lot of people in Manhattan won't even leave a six block radius," says Martha Knochimson, as she patiently waits for a crosstown bus at 86th and Lexington Avenue. Her friends have dropped memberships to gyms because they don't want to travel across town.

In general, there are a number of ways New Yorkers get across town, including bus, taxi, bike and on foot. They each have their own crosstown war stories and thoughts on why traveling a mere two miles is often so harrowing.

Taxi driver Tiwana Parvinder says the East-West divide exists because of the traffic congestion. "They have got to do something about it," he says, as he drives across Amsterdam Avenue on the West Side. "On the weekend there are a lot of people going back and forth. Rush hour can be bad too."

Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) say an option to relieve congestion, building a subway across town, is out of the question. Parvinder agrees. "A subway is not worth it because it would be very costly. And they would have to do it all over the city or else people would complain."

Bus drivers such as Emilio Colon, who drives East-West across 72nd Street, say it takes less than 30 minutes to get across town, but that unforeseen circumstances often force them to slow down. "This particular line has a lot of senior-citizen passengers so that takes a while," he says. "I think it is pretty good service but people have to be patient." There is no direct route through Central Park at 72nd Street, so Colon's route takes him down to 65th Street, where he crosses the park. That adds at least five to 10 minutes to the ride, he says. There are also large construction sites in the '60s on the West Side that back up traffic, he says.

Commuters wait patiently for a ride that can take nearly an hour to ride two miles.
PHOTO: Jon Gelb