Daily journey experiences and patterns

Daily Journey

Commuting to school in New York City is a very exciting, entertaining and sometimes even strange journey. For the past four days I have been very observant of my surrounding as I walked through the streets of New York on my way to school. I get out of the subway at 68th street and Lexington Avenue, where Hunter College is located. This is an extremely busy subway station and college campus. I got out of the subway around 5pm each day, where there were numerous students standing around, walking around and some just sitting outside smoking a cigarette. I tried to count the amount to people I saw there the first day and I could not get the exact amount of people, I averaged about 54 individuals. Each day was very similar in that there were many people walking around the campus.

My house is located six blocks away from this subway station which is close to a mile. I counted four mailboxes on my route and an average of three to four trees per block. On these blocks were a combination of businesses, and residential properties. I counted nine restaurants on my path home, and one deli. At the subway station at 68th and Lexington Avenue, there were three street vendors. I also counted 48 parking meters on the side of the street that I walked on during my walk home.

Some of the things that were surprising to me is that there were so many parking meters. I noticed there is a mix of businesses and residential facilities. On the lower floors are the businesses such as restaurants and offices; while on the upper floors are the apartments. There are defiantly more advertisements than tree, flyers posted on windows, and signs whereas there are very little trees. The sidewalk is uneven in some places broken, but comparatively to many other parts of New York, the subway is great.

Some of the things that changed daily were the people whom I passed and the cars on the street. On one day the streets were not busy, however the rest of the days there was heavy vehicular traffic. I passed a lot of college students around the subway station, however during the walk home I passed a mixed blend of people, business people walking home or their offices, nannies and moms walking with little children and employees in the neighborhoods. On the freezing cold days there were fewer children on the street, and no elderly people. One day during my walk it was raining so almost everyone had an umbrella. I did not see anyone that I recognized daily except the street vendors. I did see many people on their cell phones, except on the day it was raining. On the rainy day, there was a gentleman selling umbrella at the subway station. My cell phone signal did not really change during my walk home.