I used to make that tram ride/train ride every day in high school up to Bronx Science.  I figured once the subway was in place, the Tram would have been shut down for good—I guess we’ll see how it plays out now that they’re faced with having to manufacture parts to make the repairs.

My trip up to 205th street used to take over an hour each way—but it was great fun to meet up with friends on the 4 train, finish (or start) my homework and decide what to do as we passed Yankee stadium on the way up.

I can relate to your situation.  We are in the process of moving from Hoboken to Maplewood (both in NJ).  We’ve aleady bought our new house, and are about to go into contract on the sale side.  Once we clear attorney review, we can finally move, comfortable that we won’t be faced with trying to sell an unfurnished apartment.  However, we’d like our oldest to finish out the school year.  It’s nursery school, but she’s gone through the whole year with this class and we don’t want to pull her out early; she’s already showing some move-related stress).  So we may all find ourselves commuting for about a month: me to NYC to work, Natasha (4) to Hoboken for school and Mom and Allie (2) along for the ride.  It’s the same train line, so we’ll do it as a family in the morning.  It should be interesting.

When I was about 12 we were about to move one town over.  My folks wanted us to start the school year in our new schools rather than have me start 7th grade in the JrHS for the old town and leave it after one month.  So she drove me everyday to the new town’s JrHS and then she parked outside the elementary school and waited 45 minutes for my sister’s school to open.  In the afternoon this would work in reverse...she’d pick me up and then we’d wait for for my sister’s school to let out.  It was an interesting month.

In my present case if we can’t register my son in a Manhattan school closer to our new apartment I may be doing this all next year as he is automatically allowed to continue in his present school even though we don’t live in that neighborhood anymore.

Some mornings the commute is easy other mornings not so.  Not only is the Tram still out of service yesterday morning all subway service to/from Roosevelt Island was out but luckily we were already off the Island when the stoppage hit.  Again it’s a daily adventure.