A four-hour commute--if he's lucky

By Justin Rocket Silverman, amNewYork Staff Writer | jsilverman@am-ny.com

March 22, 2007

Staten Island is only a few miles south of Manhattan, but the two boroughs can feel a world apart. Few know this better than Jonathan Acierno, who spends upward of an hour on an "express" bus commuting across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to Grand Central Terminal.

Once he arrives in midtown, the 26-year-old academic counselor is just about half way to work.

He still has a 45-minute Metro-North commuter train ride ahead of him to Ardsley-On-Hudson, the closest stop to Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry. After stepping off the train, Acierno climbs half a mile up a steep hill, and then across campus to his building, where he is often the first one at his desk.

"What it comes down to is that I love my job," said Acierno during one predawn bus ride on the gridlocked Gowanus Expressway. "Yeah the commute sucks. Who commutes two or three hours everyday to get to work? But I feel like I am making an impact on my students lives, and that makes it worthwhile."

If buses, trains and traffic cooperate, the affable Staten Island native, who lives with his parents to save money, can make it to Mercy College in just over two hours. But one traffic jam in the tunnel, or a missed connection between bus and train, and suddenly he is not the first one at his desk -- he is the very last one.

"There have been days when I spent more time commuting than actually at my job," he says, forcing a laugh. "It seems like something is always bound to go wrong. Someone sneezes on the Gowanus and there is a major accident."

In the three years since Acierno earned his masters in education from NYU and began working at Mercy, he has memorized the bus and train timetable down to the minute. He knows when he has to run for the train, and when he is at leisure to pick up a peppermint mocha. He is on a first name basis with the baristas at Grand Central, and the conductor on the 7:44 a.m. peak train to Ardsley-On-Hudson.

Through it all he retains an almost superhuman optimism, shrugging off the transit delays and annoyances that would drive many a seasoned commuter to crush his MetroCard in a fit of rage.

"This is my first professional job out of grad school," says Acierno, "and it is something that I love. But when I do eventually move on to something else, I'll make sure it's closer to home."

The Extreme Commuter can be anyone who takes more than the average ride to work. Whether it's a complicated bus and subway transfer, an extra long ride, or just something that requires the person to get up really, really early, amNewYork wants to hear about it. Email your suggestions to jsilverman@am-ny.com