Discounted Travel

Senior Discounts have become plentiful.  Most are minor, two or three dollars off admission to a museum or an event.  Some are substantial.  My adjacent state of Pennsylvania offers a big one.  SEPTA , the regional transit system, allows seniors to ride free anywhere within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The nearest station is across the state line in Pennsylvania and my destination is nearly always Philadelphia, so I need only provide four quarters for parking each time I ride.  Once in the city, I need only swipe my card on their subways, els, or buses for another free ride.  It worked rather well.  I visited the Liberty Bell, grabbed a snack at the Reading Terminal Market, walked around a bit through the historical area.  As I did that, I noted other places I might like to sample like the American Jewish History Museum a block or so away.

This good deal has a few limits.  If I take the SEPTA train to Delaware or New Jersey, they charge half-fare, which remains a significant discount.  

As much as I like being a tourist, eager to sample perhaps the Mutter Museum or maybe go to a Penn football game in the fall, this SEPTA pass also serves as my entry to discounted New York City.  I can either catch the Megabus, which departs a short walk from the main train station or I can take SEPTA to Trenton, pay the half fare, then get a half-price train to NYC.  Both the bus and discounted NJ Transit cost about the same, so it seems more a matter of convenience.  I think the bus would be faster than taking SEPTA the additional ride to Trenton, then taking a commuter train, so I'll likely try this first.

As a young fellow, probably until my early married years, I used to visit NYC frequently, mooching a commuter ride with my father or a neighbor.  Later it became a destination to be planned.  Discounted weekends of my young adult years are long gone.  In recent years, I could get an economical bus from my town, leaving early AM, catching a 6PM return from Manhattan.  I would depend on my wife to transport me to the bus station, which sits in a seedy, not entirely safe part of town.  That bus service has gotten more expensive as well as more difficult to find a return trip with the same carrier.  But travel between Philly and NYC or Trenton and NYC takes place frequently in both directions.  Its fare undercuts my local fare by about two-thirds, so it is something I must arrange to do, perhaps twice this summer.  I need not inconvenience my wife at all.

NYC has sights, as does Philadelphia.  It also has friends, and at one time my children, which Philadelphia does not.  And so low cost that I need only consider convenience and destination, not expense.  A periodic must-do.