Transportation in Ithaca

Ithaca is in the rural Finger Lakes region about 250 miles to the northwest of New York City; the nearest larger cities, Binghamton and Syracuse, are an hour’s drive away by car.

Ithaca is served by Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, located about three miles to the northeast of the city center. US Airways Express offers flights to New York LaGuardia and Philadelphia using a mixture of small jets and propeller craft. Northwest Airlink provides twice-daily service to Detroit Metro airport. Many residents travel to Syracuse Hancock International Airport, Greater Binghamton Airport, Elmira-Corning Regional Airport or Greater Rochester International Airport for more service options.

Ithaca lies at over a half hour’s drive from any interstate highway, and all car trips to Ithaca involve at least some driving on two-lane state rural highways. The city is at the convergence of many regional two-lane state highways: Routes 13, 13A, 34, 79, 89, 96, 96B, and 366. These are usually not congested except in Ithaca proper. There is frequent intercity bus service by Greyhound, Adirondack Trailways, and Shortline (First Transit), particularly to Binghamton and New York City, with limited service to Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse, and (via connections in Binghamton) to Utica and Albany.

Ithaca is the center of an extensive bus public transportation system - Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) - which carried 3.1 million passengers in 2005.[1] TCAT was reorganized as a non-profit corporation in 2004 and is primarily supported locally by Cornell University, the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County. TCAT operates thirty nine routes, many running seven days a week.

It has frequent service to downtown, Cornell, Ithaca College, and the Pyramid Mall in the neighboring Town of Lansing, but less frequent service to many residential and rural areas, including [[[Trumansburg, New York|Trumansburg]] and Newfield. Chemung County Transit runs weekday commuter routes into Schuyler and Chemung counties, and Tioga County Public Transit runs weekday routes into neighboring Tioga, primarily to serve Cornell employees who prefer to live in these rural counties, or are forced to because of the high house prices near Ithaca.

GADABOUT Transportation Services, Inc. provides demand -response paratransit service for seniors over 60 and people with disabilities. Ithaca Dispatch and Finger Lakes Taxi provide local and regional taxi service. Ithaca Airline Limousine connects to the airport.

Regional short haul freight trains reach Ithaca from Sayre, PA, mainly to deliver coal to the Milliken Power Station halfway up Cayuga Lake. There is no passenger rail service, although from the 1870’s through the 1930’s there was service to Buffalo via Geneva, New York City via Wilkes-Barre (Lehigh Valley Railroad) and Scranton (DLandW), Auburn, and the northeast via Cortland; service to Buffalo and New York lasted until 196.