I think you can find it on the bus company website. My guess is only slightly longer than the normal drive time and it varies by traffic… They also go to Newark Airport. It’s pretty direct, though. This is a well used service by commuters.
OK, I found TransBridge bus line. It’s about 2.5 hours from Bethlehem to NYC, depending on which bus you take. The problem is that it’s terminal is not near the Lehigh campus. By local bus service, there’s another 35-65 minutes to get from campus to the bus terminal. As I posted, NEU students can walk to Amtrak. And then there’s the issue of delays between the time local bus service gets you to the TransBridge terminal and the time their bus actually leaves.
Then there’s the problem of on-time arrival. Amtrak doesn’t have to deal with NY/NJ traffic, so there on-time arrival rate is good with rare exceptions. Bus is much more dicey. I have a family member who commuted from NJ to Manhattan. The bus was never anywhere close to being on time.
In the real world a bus from Lehigh to NYC isn’t much different than Boston to NY by train.
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Having more than too much personal experience with commuting by bus to NYC, the inbound times are quite accurate because the busses have their own lanes that keep them out of general traffic. The return trip, however, is a different story.
The frequency of service at rush hour is very good, often every 10 to 15 minutes. Midday at weekends, less so. During covid, well, maybe not at all.
But no, Bethlehem is not a bedroom community of NYC. And NU is in Boston. But I think overall that it is easier to access NYC from Bethlehem than from Boston.
But my point was that there IS a public transportation option to NYC, which was not what was stated above.
Thanks. I agree that you made a good point about bus service from Bethlehem to NYC. That’s valuable information. It’s also good to know that bus lanes have improved arrival times.
I don’t know where you were leaving from when you took TransBridge, but at quick glance, it seemed to me that there were more bus departures from locations closer to NYC than Bethlehem, so IDK about leaving every 10-15 minutes. I’ll wait to be corrected.
I was only trying to point out that the time it takes to get to NYC from Lehigh to NYC has to include more than the Trans Bridge service since campus is remote from the bus terminal and highways are inherently more prone to delays due to accidents, road work and bottlenecks than rail travel is.
By car, Lehigh may be a “short hop” to NYC, i.e. under 2 hours, but by public transit, it certainly is not since someone would have to plan for a minimum of 3.5-4 hours.
Just as an aside…why would students be commuting to NYC from Lehigh or NEU?
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They wouldn’t be commuting.
To get the context, check Bennty’s posts earlier in this thread.
i go to northeastern and i would definitely recommend it if co-op is important to you. we have an actual campus in the city which is fantastic with various quads, green spaces, trees, etc., and there are many parks right around campus. boston is great to be in and it’s very easy to make friends here
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Yep. PengsPhils went a little fast and misread, assumed I meant Boston-NYC, not Boston-Lehigh, which is the germane thing if you’re talking about going from a school to a co-op in another city.
The TransBridge discussion here is hilarious. Ftr, TransBridge used to have a terminal in South Bethlehem, which they scrapped a few years ago. It’s too bad, used to make it a quick hop into the city. The trip from the other stop’s annoying and can be traffic/construction delayed, but not a giant deal.
There’s an ungodly number of people who do commute from PA to NYC daily for work, so if you take the 5 am buses you’ll see a lot of suits and have a very quiet bus. Commuters from farther north in eastern PA, too. I don’t think it’s been as big a commuting bump as some people hoped from the I-78 work, but it’s still quite substantial.
I’d actually meant driving, and I left out the amount of shouting and armwaving necessary LV-Boston, but I like transit, too. Going bus->train, though…leave a forwarding address.
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It’s been a couple of years, but I’m thinking that if you’re a daredevil last-minute student with a car/friend or a mad Uber driver you’re going So Beth to ABE curbside for the bus in a comfortable 25 minutes, and you’ll stop sweating by the time you get to Lafayette. The bus itself – take an express, and iirc you’re looking at 2:00-2:15 to PABT. If you have a car, though, I think you’re getting into the city in under 2 hours, plus a day and a half to find parking you can afford (though of course if you’re just zooming/trudging around/through to Boston, bring your tylenol, but otherwise it’s fine). I don’t drive that route because I don’t have a death wish, but if you’re cavalier, it ought to be fine.
I’m laughing now remembering inviting an NYC friend to come stay in my extra rental bedroom on the Cape, and of course rather than plot the transit migration journey she got a friend and his wife to come from NJ and drive her, so all of a sudden I had so many guests in my tranquil whatsit that I just got on my bike and left them there to enjoy the place, went down to visit WHOI.
Any decision yet OP?
Thank you for your comment, it helped me a lot. I will definitely consider location in my decision.
Thank you so much for all of the information and about your son’s experience at Lehigh. I did not apply to the CSB program but have heard great things about it. I have been exploring the ISE major but did not apply to the engineering school in my application. I’ve been trying to find information about how I can switch my major before entering school in the fall but haven’t found anything online and not sure if it’s possible to do.
Great to hear about your experience at Northeastern! I am looking forward to visiting once I hear back about my financial aid package.
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I haven’t made my decision yet because I am still waiting to hear back from NEU about my financial aid package. I received a merit scholarship but not enough grant money to afford going there so I did an appeal. I am hoping to hear good news next week but if not, I will most likely make my enrollment deposit at Lehigh.
I’ve also been in touch with the schools I got waitlisted from.
Thank you everyone for your help and advice.
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I’d call the school and ask about your IBE options if you’re seriously considering it. My S was originally just CS and he applied to transfer into the CSB program at the end of freshman year. However, because the CSB curriculum is set starting freshman year he did need to take a couple of the classes he missed over the summer between freshman and sophomore year to catch up.
This gives an overview of the IDE program and courses.
The University’s Office of Admissions (610-758-3100) can provide further details for applying to the University and the IBE Honors Program.
Can I transfer into the IBE Honors Program after I’ve been at Lehigh for a while?
It is possible that a small number of exceptional students may be admitted to the program following the completion of their freshman year. Admission at this point would be highly competitive and based upon freshman year GPA, faculty recommendations, and space availability. The IBE Program will not consider transfers beyond the end of a student’s first year.
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Thank you. I emailed my admissions counselor so I am waiting to hear back. I’m sorry if I was unclear in my last post, but I was actually referring to the Industrial and Systems engineering major (ISE). Do you think I would need to be admitted to the IBE program to carry out a double major in the business and engineering school?
Oh so sorry I totally misread that! My mistake lol!
You should be able to change your major. Lehigh is pretty flexible about studying across the different schools.
I don’t think you’d have to do the IBE program. The question is can you fit all the classes in for a double major?
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(deleted earlier bit about IBE) hang on, longer thought about this one.
Both schools have become more serious recently about making sure that their non-lib-arts people walk out knowing how to communicate. The NE admin I know have been smart about hiring people from the right fields, and the biz comm guy at Lehigh is an old colleague who knows his business. I think you’d be fine as far as that goes in either place; my point is don’t slough off the comms/writing stuff. You’ll really need it. A good email or document wins the day, especially if you’re in with the ideas ahead of anyone else. (That’s really the advantage that the LAC people have in those environments.)
Okay. So looking at IBE, it looks as though this is their attempt at collecting students who’re wanting to do what you’re talking about and keeping them from imploding, because the double major strikes me as a tremendous and possibly untenable amount of work. You’ll notice that IBE requires you to pick a major in biz or eng, not both.
The course allocation they’ve got here is reasonable, and so is their GPA requirement. It looks heavily-mentored by the faculty team, and I’m guessing that’s necessary (this is also a very Lehigh thing, faculty teams mentoring students). I’d talk to them about it now, though it’s possible their roster’s already full.
The problem with any interdisc program is the reservation about “is this a dilettante’s menu, or has the student got any actual depth anywhere?” The value here is really going to be in those integrated courses that actually try to train you in interdisciplinarity. How well they actually do it – it isn’t easy – I don’t know. I am guessing though that the general idea is “Engineer wants to start business, knows nothing about business, let’s head that one off,” but it’d be worth talking with either Kish or Storer about the actual intentions of the program…yeah, it’s about STEM startups. Lot of baloney language on the IBE page but they’re clearly sensitive to the charges of dilettantism.
If business is really what you’re interested in, and you don’t care if it’s STEM biz or not, IBE will tie you down. That’s a heavy STEM load in there, and you’ll won’t have room for, say, the kind of ed that comes in handy for intl mgmt. But if you’re really drawn to STEM, and are just thinking you like the biz more than the eng, it looks like a very good idea.
Another way of thinking about it is to ask what’s hardest to learn on your own and pick up later, since it’s not as though you’ll be done learning when you’re 22. Leaving doors open is in general a good thing to do when you’re 18. It seems to me that learning to think like an engineer is probably marginally harder to do on your own than, say, learning to think like an internationalist, but just consider what you’re drawn to.
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