Ithaca ’s TCAT (Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit) offers daily service throughout most of the city and some rural areas.

In addition, connections are available to other regional carriers such as Chemung County Transit (from Elmira), Corland Transit and Broome County Transit (Binghamton, Endicott, Johnson City).

The Tompkins County Airport north of Ithaca also offers non-stop commuter aircraft service to Philadelphia, New York (LaGuardia), and Pittsburgh.

Coach USA and Greyhound also offer a number of trips every day to a number of regional destinations from Downtown Ithaca. The terminal for both carriers is 710 West State St., Ithaca, NY.

Ithaca EcoVillage

EcoVillage at Ithaca, located in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, is part of a growing global movement for a saner, more sustainable human culture. Comprising an intentional community and a non-profit educational organization, the project aims to develop an alternative model for suburban living which provides a satisfying, healthy, socially rich lifestyle, while minimizing ecological impacts.

Our village currently includes two 30-home cohousing neighborhoods, an organic CSA vegetable farm, an organic berry farm, office spaces for cottage industry, an education office, a warm-season grasses ecosystem restoration project, a sheep pasture, and varied natural areas. Over 80% of the 175 acre site is planned to remain green space, including 55 acres in a conservation easement held by the Finger Lakes Land Trust.

Future elements include more accessible and affordable housing, an education center, a charter school, village-scale wind power, organic orchards, a roadside farm stand, on-site biological wastewater treatment, greywater recycling, biomass energy crops, onsite biodiesel/vegetable-oil fuel production, carshare, shuttle van, a natural cemetery, and an expanding portfolio of educational programs.

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.
(more…)

Government of Ithaca

The name “Ithaca” actually designates two governmental entities in the area. The Town of Ithaca is one of the nine towns comprised by Tompkins County. (”Towns” in New York are something like townships in other states; every county outside New York City is subdivided into towns.) The City of Ithaca is surrounded by, but legally independent of, the Town of Ithaca.

As of December, 2005, the city and town governments have begun discussing opportunities for increased government consolidation, including the possibility of joining the two into a single town or city. This topic was last discussed in 1963 and 1969.

The possibility of consolidation is controversial for Town residents who could be forced to pay higher taxes as they help shoulder the higher debt burden that the City has taken on. Some Town residents also worry that consolidation could lead to increased sprawl and traffic congestion. However, most of the Town’s population is already concentrated in hamlets in close proximity to the City’s borders and Town residents take advantage of City amenities.

Other non-municipal areas within the Town of Ithaca identified by the US Census Bureau as census-designated places are:
East Ithaca
Forest Home
Northeast Ithaca
Northwest Ithaca
South Hill

In addition, the Town of Ithaca contains the Village of Cayuga Heights, a small incorporated upper-middle class suburb located to the northeast of the City of Ithaca.

The Town of Ithaca is bordered by other towns of Tompkins County as follows:
Enfield to the west
Ulysses to the northwest
Lansing to the northeast
Dryden to the east
Danby to the south
Newfield to the southwest

The majority of local property taxes are actually assessed by an entirely independent agency with entirely different borders, the Ithaca City School District.

The name “Ithaca” actually designates two governmental entities in the area. The Town of Ithaca is one of the nine towns comprised by Tompkins County. (”Towns” in New York are something like townships in other states; every county outside New York City is subdivided into towns.) The City of Ithaca is surrounded by, but legally independent of, the Town of Ithaca.

As of December, 2005, the city and town governments have begun discussing opportunities for increased government consolidation, including the possibility of joining the two into a single town or city. This topic was last discussed in 1963 and 1969.

The possibility of consolidation is controversial for Town residents who could be forced to pay higher taxes as they help shoulder the higher debt burden that the City has taken on. Some Town residents also worry that consolidation could lead to increased sprawl and traffic congestion. However, most of the Town’s population is already concentrated in hamlets in close proximity to the City’s borders and Town residents take advantage of City amenities.
(more…)

Ithaca city life

The economy of Ithaca is based on education and manufacturing with high tech and tourism in strong supporting roles. As of 2006, Ithaca remains one of the few expanding economies in economically troubled New York State outside of New York City, and draws commuters from the neighboring rural counties of Cortland, Tioga, and Schuyler, as well as from the more urbanized Chemung County. The city is home to Cornell University, which overlooks the town from East Hill, and Ithaca College, similarly situated on South Hill.

The student population is very high, as almost 20,000 students are enrolled at Cornell, with an additional 6,300 students at Ithaca College. The Ithaca City School District, which encompasses Ithaca and the surrounding area, enrolls about 5,500 K-12 students in eight elementary schools, two middle schools, Ithaca High School, and the Lehman Alternative Community School, which provides its students wide-ranging freedom to choose their own curriculum, occasionally resulting in controversy over political content in academic events.

Tourists come largely for the natural scenery, including three gorges within the city limits and three in nearby state parks. Visitors also enjoy Cayuga Lake, numerous hiking, skiing, and bicycling trails, and visits to wineries in lakeside vineyards found north and west of the city.

With some level of success, Ithaca has tried to maintain a traditional downtown shopping area that includes the Ithaca Commons pedestrian mall and Center Ithaca, a small mixed-use complex built at the end of the urban renewal era. Therefore, some in the community regret that downtown has lost vitality to two expanding commercial zones to the northeast and southwest of the old city. (more…)

Geography and climate of Ithaca

The valley in which Cayuga Lake is located is long and narrow, with a north-south orientation. Ithaca was founded on flat land just south of the lake - land that formed in fairly recent geological times when silt filled the southern end of the lake. The city ultimately spread to the adjacent hillsides, which rise several hundred feet above the central flats: East Hill, West Hill, and South Hill. Its sides are fairly steep, and a number of the streams that flow into the valley from east or west have cut deep gorges, usually with several waterfalls.

Ithaca experiences a moderate continental climate, with cold, snowy winters and sometimes hot and humid summers. The valley flatland has slightly milder weather in winter, and occasionally Ithacans experience simultaneous snow on the hills and rain in the valley.

The natural vegetation of the Ithaca area, seen in areas unbuilt and unfarmed, is northern temperate broadleaf forest, dominated by deciduous trees. Among these, maples are particularly common. Steep hillsides seen from a distance resemble a curtain of green from late May through September, show bright fall colors in October, and are a display of gray trunks and branches, often with a white snowy background, from November through early May.

The region surrounding Ithaca is dotted with numerous wineries, many of which specialize in the native Labrusca grape varietals, although more and more vintners have started to focus upon the classic Vinifera styles such as Riesling and Cabernet Franc. Despite the relatively short growing season in the Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area, vineyards can flourish due to the microclimates created by the impact of the lakes.

History of Ithaca

The inhabitants of the Ithaca area at the time of European expansion were the Sapony and Tutelo Indians, dependent tribes of the Cayuga Indians who formed part of the Iroquois confederation. These tribes had been allowed to settle on Cayuga-controlled hunting lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake as well as in Pony (originally Sapony) Hollow of Newfield, New York, after being forced from North Carolina by European expansion.

They were driven from the area by the Sullivan Expedition which destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal, located near the junction of state routes 13 and 13A just south of the Ithaca city limits. Indian presence in the current City of Ithaca was limited to a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge.

The destruction of Iroquois confederation power opened the region to settlement by people of European origin, a process which began in 1789. In 1790, an official program began for distributing land in the area as a reward for service to the American soldiers of the Revolutionary War; most local land titles trace back to the Revolutionary war grants. Lots were drawn in 1791; informal settlement had already started.

As part of this process, the Central New York Military Tract, which included northern Tompkins County, was surveyed by Simeon DeWitt. His clerk Robert Harpur apparently had a fondness for ancient Greek and Roman history as well as English authors and philosophers (as evidenced by the nearby townships of Dryden and Locke). The Commissioners of Lands of NY State (chairman Gov. George Clinton) followed Harpur’s recommendations at a meeting in 1790. The Military Tract township in which proto-Ithaca was located he named Ulysses, the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey. A few years later DeWitt moved to Ithaca and named it for the Greek island home of Ulysses (still the surrounding township at the time — nowadays Ulysses is just a town in Tompkins County). Contrary to popular myth, DeWitt did not name many of the classical references found in upstate NY such as Syracuse and Troy; these were from the general classical fervor of the times. Perhaps because of the name, The Odyssey is routinely taught to elementary school students in the Ithaca area.

In the 1820s and 1830, Ithacans held high hopes of becoming a major city when the primitive Ithaca and Owego Railway was completed in 1832 to connect the Erie Canal navigation with the Susquehanna River to the south. These hopes survived the depression of 1837 when the railroad was re-organized as the Cayuga and Susquehanna and re-engineered with switchbacks in the late 1840’s; much of this route is now used by the South Hill Recreation Way.

However, easier routes soon became available, such as the Syracuse, Binghamton and New York (1854). In the decade following the Civil War railroads were built from Ithaca to all surrounding points (Geneva, Cayuga, Cortland, Elmira, Athens PA) mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell; however the geography of the city has always prevented it from lying on a major transportation artery. When the Lehigh Valley Railroad built its main line from Pennsylvania to Buffalo in 1890 it bypassed Ithaca (running via eastern Schuyler County on easier grades), as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad had done in the 1850’s. Ithaca became a city in 1888 and remained a small manufacturing and retail center until the recent education boom.
(more…)

The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca in Homer’s Odyssey) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State. The City of Ithaca is the center of the Ithaca metropolitan area (which also contains the legally distinct Town of Ithaca and other towns and villages in Tompkins County) and county seat of Tompkins County, New York.

As of 2000, the city had a population of 29,287, and the metropolitan area had a population of 100,135. Ithaca is the smallest metropolitan statistical area in New York State.It is known for its liberal politics, particularly in contrast to the surrounding rural (and conservative) villages.

According to Census Bureau estimates, the population of Tompkins County increased by 5.1% from 2000 to 2003. The number of people living in the county rose from 96,501 to 101,411.