Ikea Shuttle Bests MTA Service for Some
The Daily News reports that “countless commuters” are using the free Ikea shuttle service instead of city buses, saving $2 and, in some cases, shortening their commutes. “It’s like a free car service,” says a woman who takes the Ikea bus from Downtown to where she works in Red Hook. “It takes us straight downtown…
The Daily News reports that “countless commuters” are using the free Ikea shuttle service instead of city buses, saving $2 and, in some cases, shortening their commutes. “It’s like a free car service,” says a woman who takes the Ikea bus from Downtown to where she works in Red Hook. “It takes us straight downtown and I don’t have to wait for the bus to stop every block to let people on and off.” The paper found that only eight of 19 passengers on a recent trip were actually going to Ikea. One shuttle driver said that many of his morning passengers are actually patients at a methadone clinic. A spokesperson for Ikea says the company supports “mass transit, and if people are using our services and not going to Ikea, that’s fine with us as well.”
Commuters Using Ikea Shuttle Bus to Bypass MTA Routes [NY Daily News]
Photo by street scenes.
Mr. B,
We BEG of you – institute a character limit, PLEASE!!!!
My question is did they not anticipate that folks would take advantage of the free shuttle? What they should have done is had people pay for shuttle up front and give them a $4 credit at the end of their purchase. It’s just that simple.
A ClintonHillLady
As quoted from the Daily News Article –
“It’s such a nice ride, I’d almost be happy to pay for it,” said Steve Riley, 40, who lives in Park Slope, takes the Ikea bus and then transfers to the Ikea water taxi for his job in SoHo. “It was so very different from the miserable experience of the subway and I got to see all four of the waterfalls.”
So a guy who lives in park slope takes a bus to red hook, then hops a ferry to wall street, presumably to catch a subway upto soho, when he could just take the F train right into soho @ west 4th street. I don’t care how pleasant all this ikea transport is, what a waste of time!
oops, i meant:
http://www.cafepress.com/FireMTANow
Dear city,
Learn a lesson from this, The MTA sucks! Please hire IKEA to take over our public transportation and fire the MTA NOW!
https://www.cafepress.com/firethemtanow
I’ve done this myself–I grabbed the IKEA shuttle downtown and went shopping at Fairway. I remembered to stuff everything into a blue IKEA bag before reboarding–however it doesn’t seem that they’re going to care about a few grocery shoppers if they’re shuttling junkies back and forth. It literally saved me a whole hour of time, though I have a monthly MetroCard so it didn’t save me any money. It was so much more pleasant than the B61 all around.
This blog had better stick to real estate.
It’s just like Stockholm.
if Ikea is going to subsidize transportation couldn’t they at least put some cleaner buses on the road.