Part-Time PoTowners and Poughkeepsie Transportation
The Poughkeepsie area is close enough to more major cities, like New York City, that many people commute down every day, whether it be by train, bus, or car. But what about the people who commute from the opposite direction? Since Dutchess County has quite a few colleges in the area, academics from around the tri-state area (and further) tend to look for teaching positions in this area. Dr. Kevin Lerner, a Communications professor at Marist College, described how he came to be a “reverse-commuter” for his first year as a Marist professor. I also interviewed Dr. John Knight, a Religious Studies professor at Marist, on his current weekly commute up from a suburb of Washington D.C.
“I was originally hired in 2009 as a visiting professor, which means it was a one year contract,” said Lerner, comfortably sitting in his office in the Lowell Thomas building on Marist’s campus, home of the college’s Communications department. “That means there would be no guarantee that I would be hired year after year after year. At the time, I was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so when I got the call from then department chair Keith Strudler and he said ‘Hey, do you want to come aboard?’, I was like ‘Great! Yes! I would love a job!’ The problem was it was literally August 1st and classes started like 3 weeks later. I wasn’t about to move and my life at that point was in New York City, so I commuted.”
Lerner spent that first year getting an early start every day to make it to his 9:30 a.m. classes: “I would get up in the morning and I would take the train down to Grand Central (which is complicated from the Upper West Side) and I would get on the 6:41 a.m. train…” Lerner laughed, remembering groggily making his way to the train station. “I remember that so vividly! Yeah, so I would take the hour and a half ride up to Poughkeepsie. I’d get to the train station, walk up the hill past the taxi guys, down Delafield, and then cross the street into campus. It was like a 25 minute walk.”
“I remember there was this one conductor; he was on that train almost all the time. He used to play the PA system microphone like it was a drum set, so as we were coming in, he’d be like ‘Da da da da da da PEEKSKILL!’” (Mentally insert Dr. Lerner dramatically drumming on his desk here.) “He’d just yell Peekskill into the microphone and I’d just be like ‘Please let me sleep.’ I mean good for him for having that kind of energy at 7 in the morning, but I often just wanted to go back to sleep.”
“It was fine most days, it almost never rained on me. There was one snow day though that was really kind of nasty. And every now and then, I’d miss the train or something like that. And then, at the end of the day, it was 25 minutes back to the train station, another hour and a half back to Grand Central, and then back up to the Upper West Side. In the middle of all that, I moved to Astoria because I was in grad school. It was about the same commute from there; it wasn’t a huge issue. But boy, it was so tiring. So when it came around to the spring and Marist offered me a contract for another year, I was like ‘I am not doing this again,’ so I moved up. But for that first year, it was a commuter life. Poughkeepsie was work for me. I didn’t really get to know the area that much. Back then, we had a weekly happy hour at The Derby, so I knew how to get there and places that people would drive me. For me, Poughkeepsie was that stretch of Delafield.”
As the public transportation in the Poughkeepsie area (and the Hudson Valley in general) is known for its lack of reliability, I asked Dr. Lerner what he thought the city could do to make it more commuter friendly: “You know, it would’ve been so much easier if there had been a shuttle bus that Marist ran to meet every train. A little bus could show up, you get on, and you come back to campus. I mean, it would take 5 minutes instead of 25. That would’ve made a huge difference. If there were just a trustworthy public transportation system…it’s not a big city. I mean there is the LOOP bus, but nobody knows what time it comes and where it goes.”
The LOOP bus is a true mystery to non-locals in the Poughkeepsie area. There don’t seem to be any designated signs. Locals instead seem to line up seemingly out of nowhere by a bench on the side of the highway, which is everyone else’s cue that the LOOP is near. In addition to the LOOP, the City of Poughkeepsie also has its own separate bus system, which operates Monday to Saturday. The city also (apparently) has a ParaTransit service for those with disabilities as well as a program called Dial-A-Ride, which is described on the Public Works page of the City of Poughkeepsie’s website as “a curb-to-curb transportation service open to the general public.” However, if the person requesting this service has the ability to use the LOOP bus, they are not eligible for Dial-A-Ride. In addition, Dial-A-Ride can only be used if the person in question is traveling to and from East Fishkill, Fishkill, Hyde Park, town of Poughkeepsie, Wappinger, and city of Poughkeepsie. Upon contacting the Department of Public Works multiple times, my calls regarding possible shuttle buses from the train station, more clearly noted LOOP bus stops, and why the city and LOOP buses are separate entities went unanswered.
For a truly arduous commuting life, look no further than Dr. John Knight, a Marist professor of Religious Studies. Although his office seemed disorganized at first glance on Thursday morning, all the stacks of papers and rows upon rows of books all had their place. Given the fact that Dr. Knight is currently working on two books at the same time and commuting from Virginia to New York on a weekly basis, he seems to have his life pretty well under control.
“A typical commuting week for me is I’ll leave my house around between 4:30 and quarter of 5 in the morning. I live in a suburb of D.C. called Alexandria, Virginia. I’ll usually get into this area anywhere between 10 and 10:45 a.m. for my 11:00 class. After class, I’ll get some lunch and work until 6 since I’ve got a 6:30 class…this is just on Tuesdays, by the way. Wednesdays I don’t have any classes. I usually just have my office hours and meetings during the activity hour. Sometimes, there will be lectures. We had one just last night; I coordinate the academic lecture series. On Thursday, my 11:00 class meets again, I’ll do some more office hours, and then usually I’ll go home Thursday afternoon. I get in roughly around dinner time most weeks. It’s not like that every week though. This week, I have another lecture tonight so I’m staying over tonight.”
When asked why he chose Marist if it was so out of his way, he gave a surprising answer: “Well, I actually used to live here. I went to graduate school at The University of Chicago. I used to be a lawyer and I worked in D.C. for a while, and then I just was very interested in religion, so I went back to graduate school in Chicago. When I graduated, there were several job opportunities. Marist seemed like a good school; I really liked the area, I liked the people that I met very much, and it seemed to me at the time that academics at the school were heading on an upward trajectory. My wife commuted from here to Chicago because she was teaching out there when I was there in graduate school. That was a difficult commute. A job opened up for her in Alexandria, Virginia, but she was required to live on campus as part of her job, so we moved down there. Obviously, I’d rather not commute, but when you have a couple, both of whom are academics, it’s almost inevitable.”
“Overall, it’s not too bad. I’m actually on campus more now that I’m commuting than I was when I lived here. When I lived here, my kids got out of school at 2:30 every day, and my wife was in Chicago, so I’d have to be home to take care of them. It’s sort of ironic, actually. I don’t really have much less time now than I used to. I’m driving now, so I spend about 10 hours a week driving. But I have, maybe not quite 10 hours more, but it’s almost a wash in terms of how much work time I have.”
In terms of Poughkeepsie being more commuter friendly, Knight had this to say: “There’s always more, there’s always more that could be done. The town itself seems fine since there’s no real traffic. I usually go over on the Thruway. They could definitely reduce the traffic around New York City,” Knight stated with a smile and a laugh, in full knowledge that that probably won’t happen anytime soon. “Overall, I think commuting is definitely worth it, for sure. If I didn’t, I’d quit.” Could there be any move in sight for this full-time commuter? “No, I don’t think so. I mean, anything’s possible. You never know what might happen. But I don’t really think so. I’m happy enough here, and my wife is happy enough where she is. She’s an Old Testament scholar, and she’s also an Episcopal priest. The seminary where she works is one of the preeminent Episcopal seminaries in the country, so she’s not going to go anywhere. I don’t really see us moving anywhere until I retire, but that’s not going to be for another 20 years or so.”
