new york is a city of trains
while it has the subway that travels just within manhattan and parts of the outer boroughs it also
has rails that go beyond it in an ideal world it would be a breeze navigating all these trains
but in real life you run into some globally gloop all the time so that is why this channel has made
a video guide for the path the lirr and now in this video we are going to cover the metro
north we're going to talk about the different lines tickets schedule and everything else that
you might need to know when traveling the metro north welcome to urban caffeine you know the drill
the metro north railroad is a commuter rail
its lines terminate in midtown manhattan in new york city and reaches out to connecticut
upstate new york and new jersey it basically complements the long island railroad or l-i-r-r
or l-i-r or however you want to pronounce it while the lirr goes east of new york city the
metro north goes north in fact the lirr and this portion of the metro north use the same app for
looking up schedules and buying tickets but we'll cover schedules and tickets later in this video
two terminals to know are grand central terminal and penn station
because the metro north is actually made up of two sections the lines to the east side of the hudson
river terminate at grand central in manhattan and is operated by new york the lines to the west of
the hudson river are operated by new jersey and you can access these lines through penn station
note that these two terminals are not connected and there is no direct subway train that will
take you in between these two a subway will require at least one transfer since these two
sections have different operators you will find information on the east line via the new york mta
app and website for the west lines you will have to refer to the nj transit app and website for the
lines east of the hudson river most trains coming from grand central will stop at harlem first
to pick up passengers before heading north at the same time most trains in coming to manhattan
will stop by harlem first to drop off passengers before heading into grand central and this will
make sense later when we talk about express trains for trains coming out of penn station
it may seem weird that this portion of the map is all grayed out since these lines are administered
by new jersey so we dug up the new jersey rail system map to get a clearer picture of these lines
these trains of the metro north are these trains of the new jersey rail system these trains that
go north actually originate from hoboken you can catch an nj transit train from penn station
that will take you to secaucus from secaucus you can catch one of these northbound trains
trains traveling longer distances tend to skip stations to make the journey faster
for example let's say you're at grand central looking at the departure boards
since these three lines are represented by these three colors you'll also see three
colors on the departure boards at grand central let's look at the departures on the harlem line
when i first saw this i was like oh my gosh this is all globally glue
it turns out that not all trains coming from grand central make it all the way to the end
of the line which is wassaic destination on the board will indicate the last stop of that train
but just because a train may be heading somewhere say to south east doesn't mean that it will stop
along all the stations on the way according to this board this train going to southeast will
make its first stop at white plains effectively skipping all these stations so it's important to
read the remarks column however note that while white plains is indicated as the first stop
i mentioned earlier that most trains will stop at harlem first to pick up passengers before
heading out of manhattan so don't be confused when a train stops at harlem before heading to
its first official stop you can even see this in the app and speaking of the app
aside from the website and departure boards you can easily look up departure times on the mta
train time app as well as peak and off-peak pricing which brings us to the next chapter
unlike the subway which has a flat rate both the lirr and metro north charge fares by zones
for the trains east of the harlem river these are the zones for the metro north yes it looks
like globally glue this is because of how the trains were combined over time but for the sake
of pricing zone pricing looks more like this by the way all patreon members of urban caffeine
will get a copy of this map if you want to be a member check out patreon.com urban caffeine
traveling within the same zone will be cheaper than traveling from one zone to another
and it gets more expensive the more zones you travel you can buy a digital ticket from the
mta train time app or a paper ticket from a machine ticket machines at grand central
are located here at small stations if they are not on the platform they are probably below the
platform in the app you can look up departures by inputting your origin and destination
you can also check different prices available for that particular departure
you can purchase a ticket from here or go to the ticket tab to buy from here
in this example we're coming from grand central to the botanical garden and you are presented with
all the one-way ticket options you can also get round-trip tickets or if you're a frequent rider
you can buy tickets in bulk but let's take a look at all the different ticket options city ticket
is a special ticket that could only be used when traveling within new york city regardless of zone
during off-peak hours i will cover peak and off-peak hours here soon a good example would
be the botanical garden from grand central one is in zone two and the other is in zone one but
because the botanical garden which is in the bronx and grand central are both within the new york
city limits you can use the city ticket for this journey during off-peak times one very important
thing to note here is that once you buy a city ticket you have to use it the day of purchase
so don't think that you can buy it days ahead for these other ticket options you have 60 days
to use these tickets after purchasing so these other tickets can be bought ahead of time now
onto peak and off-peak tickets peak time is when the train you are on is scheduled to arrive at
grand central between these times or departing at these times all other times are off-peak hours if
you're a senior on medicare or have disability you can show the conductor and id with your age your
medicare card or your reduced fair metro card if you have one family tickets are for children that
are 5 to 11 years old say you're an adult with five children the fifth child will have to have
a child ticket which is one of these and military is for active duty military simply show your id to
the conductor with your ticket any ticket that you buy within the app will be under the ticket tab
make sure you activate it when you're about to ride the train
but just when you thought we covered it all if you happen to be going to the yankee stadium during a
game you will need a yankees gate pass on top of your regular ticket this is to show the person
at the station according to the crevices of the internet it's to prevent gating which is the act
of people trying to get a free ride by taking advantage of large crowds riding public transit
so that's tickets via the mobile app with the ticket machine the instructions are
pretty straightforward here i'm purchasing a round trip from grand central i'm going to the
botanical garden so i hit b i choose botanical garden from the list since it's a saturday i'm
going to get city tickets and i just need it for myself all i need are the metro north tickets
i don't need to add a metro card to my purchase i'm paying with a credit card
and at this point i'm told to finish my purchase at the card terminal then my tickets are printed
so those are your tickets if there are any other special tickets like this yankee gate pass
comment down below i'm sure the community would find it helpful
grand central will obviously be a large station with many tracks compared to a smaller station
with only two tracks so when it grants central it's important to look at the departure boards
to see what track your train is departing from if you don't see a track number for your train
don't panic a track number usually shows up 10 to 15 minutes before departure time
once you have your ticket and you know which track you are getting on simply get on the train there
are no seat assignments so you're free to sit anywhere the conductor will come around and check
tickets once you hand over your ticket to the conductor they will place a card right where you
are seated this card signifies that you have paid and are accounted for if you want to change seats
make sure you take this card with you and place it on your new seat something to note on the seats
is that some seats are oriented in the opposite direction that the train is going if you are prone
to motion sickness you might want to avoid these seats and lastly yes the trains have restrooms
if there's anything else that's been left out please leave a comment below otherwise i hope
you found this video useful with that i'd like to thank all patrons of urban caffeine
thank you for helping out this channel and being part of its growth it truly means a lot if you're
interested in exclusive content made specially for patreon members check out patreon.com
urban caffeine until next time thank you so much for watching and happy new yorking