I'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central Jersey, and

I'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central Jersey, and everyone I knew who commuted in on NJ Transit (along the Northeast Corridor line) were commuting into Manhattan. If you worked in Queens or Brooklyn, you'd live somewhere on Long Island. If you worked in the Bronx, you'd live in Westchester (or north). Some fraction of people have longer commutes, but my guess is that it would be a tiny one. You are correct, the GWB serves a diverse set of areas (I only take the GWB to get from Jersey to Westchester), but it's not the only means by which cars get into NYC. Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population actually decreases during the day), because they're so spread out.