A typical view of Brightwaters, which South Shore community has a rather unusual combination of many trees and inland lakes and 
ponds. The upper end of the Venetian yacht harbor 
The Commuter’s Long Island 
THE EXTENT OF THE ZONE IN WHICH COMMUTING IS PRACTICABLE—THE DIVER¬ 
SITY OF COUNTRY TO BE FOUND WITHIN AN HOUR’S RIDE FROM NEW YORK 
by C. E. Whittlesey 
T HERE are several alleged jokes that have grown gray and 
threadbare in the using—the talkative barber, for instance, 
and the mother-in-law theme with its variations—but the quip 
that, beyond all the rest, has been worked overtime, until its 
piquancy and zest are like unto a glass of champagne that has 
stood overnight—that dean of all the old chestnuts is the com¬ 
muter joke. One does not hear it so frequently these days, how¬ 
ever, due perhaps to the fact that the rapidly dwindling number 
of non-commuters has almost reached zero. 
1 ake Long Island, for instance. In the five years between 1903 
and 1908 the number of commuters in that wonderful country 
doubled. In the next two years, 1909 and 1910, it doubled once 
more. If this rate of increase keeps up, Manhattan at night will 
soon resemble a deserted village. Last year the Long Island 
Railroad carried twenty-eight million passengers over a space of 
four hundred and seven millions of miles. But these figures are 
too overwhelming to be really significant. Of more interest to us 
is the fact that there were, in 1910, before the opening of the 
tunnels under the 
East River, about 
17.500 people who 
went back and 
forth, day by day, 
bet ween Manhat¬ 
tan and various 
points on the 
Island. With the 
statistics at hand it 
is easy enough to 
figure out how far 
out the average 
commuter goes, 
what it costs him 
A house at Plandome that is a modern adap¬ 
tation of Dutch Colonial 
for transportation, how long it takes him to get back and forth, 
and what advantages he has for his effort. 
The average commuter on Long Island lives a trifle less than 
twenty-five miles out and reaches the new terminal in New York 
in about forty-five minutes. His commutation costs him about 
eight dollars a month. Following these figures out on the map 
of the Island it appears that our average commuter, if on the 
Oyster Bay branch, lives somewhere in the vicinity of East 
Williston ; if on the main line his home is in Westbury; on the 
Montauk division he travels back and forth from, let us say, 
Baldwin. Both the Far Rockaway and Port Washington branches 
end inside of the average distance. 
It is a difficult thing indeed to say just what constitutes the 
commuting zone on the Island. Roughly speaking, it extends 
fifty-six miles out on the Montauk division to Patchogue; on the 
main line, fifty miles to Ronkonkoma; while on the Wading River 
branch it includes Port Jefferson, which is fifty-nine miles from 
New York. This does not mean that this is the extreme limit 
of commuting, by 
a n v mean s, for 
there are men who 
travel each day 
from Southampton 
or even from Ama- 
gansett, which is 
one hundred and 
six miles out. 
Another interest¬ 
ing comparison is 
between the num¬ 
ber of commuters 
in winter and those 
in summer. To 
From the high bluffs of Belle Terre there is 
a splendid view over Long Island Sound 
