What’s the best way to get to New York City? We tested one of the new options for Concord-area residents.
Published: 06-04-2025 9:23 AM
Modified: 06-04-2025 8:00 PM |
It was opening weekend for the Concord-to-New York bus route and the group of Granite Staters who had congregated on a Manhattan side street were in high spirits.
Concord resident Hillary Anderson had just spent a few days visiting her daughter. Her nephew, Caleb Anderson, had tagged along, primarily to attend a Beyonce concert at MetLife Stadium.
Nashua resident Andre Beausoleil and his wife had squeezed three Broadway musicals into their trip, including “Maybe Happy Ending,” a show that “was like nothing we’ve seen before,” Beausoleil said.
Valerie Manha and Jake Meier, also from Nashua, had come to the Big Apple for a salsa festival – the dance, not the dip.
As the group waited in line, their happiness reflected more than just long weekends well spent. For the first time in over five years, Concord Coach was running between New Hampshire’s capital city and the most populous city in the country, and they were some of the 27 passengers who would be taking it home.
Before May 22, when the bus company restarted the route for the first time since the pandemic, the passengers would have either driven or cobbled together a hodgepodge of bus and train connections. The bus, which makes a stop in Nashua, was far more pleasant, they said.
“This is just a great option,” said Penacook resident Carol Kosnitsky, who has resorted to all manner of transportation to get to the Big Apple during the route’s hiatus.
In just a few weeks, they will have one more option. JetBlue begins daily flights from Manchester-Boston Regional Airport to JFK on June 12.
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The sudden bevy of options prompted the Concord Monitor to conduct a cost and time comparison of five different ways of getting from Concord to Manhattan: riding the direct bus, flying, driving, taking one bus to Boston and then another to New York, and driving to West Haven, Connecticut and then catching the Metro-North Railroad into the city.
Accounting for ticket costs, parking, gas, and tolls, the options ranged from $52 (the driving-train hybrid) to $121 (the flight).
The flight – including the drive to the airport, the 60 minutes to get through security and board the plane, and then the subway trip into the city – was the quickest at an estimated three hours and fifty minutes, and the multi-bus connection in Boston was the slowest at six hours and twenty-five minutes.
Comfort and ambiance are more difficult to measure objectively, so a Monitor reporter took one of Concord Coach’s first buses back from New York himself, chronicling what it looked, felt, and sounded like from the inside.
Monday May 26, 1:23 p.m. I arrived at East 42nd St. between First and Second Avenues to see a small line already waiting to board the 29-seat “plus” bus. Down the block, a much larger group was queued up to board another Concord Coach bus bound for Portland, a route the company restarted in 2021. The Concord-New York trip ($85 one-way) is the final route to come back following the pandemic pause, according to company President Ben Blunt. The route – which currently runs Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday – primarily caters to weekend travelers, though Blunt said they would consider adding midweek trips if there is enough demand.
1:54 p.m. The bus was almost full, but I lucked out and grabbed an empty pair of seats near the front. The bus has two seats on the left side of the row and one on the right, a different seating arrangement than Concord Coach’s typical buses. Also unlike the company’s reservations on the Boston route, passengers reserve for a specific trip. With all customers accounted for, driver Gerald McBride departed as the 2011 Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson film “We Bought a Zoo” played on the overhead screens. The sound, thankfully, was accessible via individual headphones.
2:23 p.m. Despite the end of a holiday weekend, McBride encountered no significant traffic as he navigated the bus through Queens over the RFK Bridge and Randall’s Island, up through the Bronx, and into Connecticut. After a busy weekend, I dozed off to a peaceful slumber.
3:28 p.m. I was awakened by McBride announcing a change of plans. “We’re going to stop in Milford, Connecticut , because the other bus stopped there for some reason,” he said, referring to the bus bound for Portland. We stopped for 15 minutes at a truck stop with a Wendy’s and McBride passed off the driving duties to another driver and took a seat with the other passengers.
5:05 p.m. We reached Massachusetts and a new Sci-Fi movie began to play. As the bus navigated traffic on the Mass Pike, I continued to nap in the leather seats, which were quite comfortable.
6:02 p.m. A remarkably well-behaved baby began to cry.
6:25 p.m. We arrived in Nashua, a travel time of 4 hours, 31 minutes. As the woman seated in front of me disembarked, she said to her partner, “This wasn’t exhausting; this was so chill.” Eighteen people – two-thirds of the passengers – got off.
6:29 p.m. I was getting hungry. Fortunately, the bus was equipped with a complimentary snack bar in the back. I grabbed some cheese crackers and a Nutri-Grain bar, passing on the coffee and soft drinks.
6:36 p.m. Out of nowhere, an intense rainstorm started. It lasted all of one minute.
6:38 p.m. Movie number three, “Moneyball,” came on. It’s one of my favorites, and I slightly regretted not owning corded headphones.
7:05 p.m. We pulled into Concord Coach’s Stickney Avenue bus terminal. Total time: 5 hours and 10 minutes, less than the 5 hours, 30 minutes projected. McBride took out my duffel bag from beneath the bus and I walked to my car, which luckily was parked relatively nearby despite parking space challenges Concord Coach has been experiencing lately. Minutes later, I was home.
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.