Spring Snarls
May 5th, 2008
It’s that time of year again — when city streets are closed to traffic, making way for foot races, organized bike rides, charity walks and street fairs. Fine. As writers for Gotham Gazette have frequently noted ( here, for example), in a city where land is a previous commodity, cars do not deserve so much of it.
The problem is not the closing of streets but how it’s managed. Police officers and traffic agents patrolling the areas seems completely unaware of alternative routes — or unwilling to provide assistance. Many are downright rude, refusing to even try to answer questions from bewildered citizens, instead demanding drivers “move along” into a miasma of traffic.
Take last Saturday. A foot race down Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway split the borough in two almost as resolutely as the wall once divided Berlin. Trying to cross Ocean Parkway, I asked an unusually helpful police officer how to proceed. He told me to take the parkway service road to Caton Avenue and go west on that. “Do that and hopefully the other cars will follow you,” he suggested.
Woe to those that did. A traffic agent a few blocks away blocked my path, When I tried to explain what the policeman had told me, the agent waved his arms, refused to answer and told me to keep moving — in the exact opposite direction I needed to go in. As cars milled about, tempers — to say nothing of emissions — mounted.
This chaos surrounding special events is not isolated. I heard a similar report from an unwitting driver snarled in Sunday’s Five Boro Bike Tour. At last fall’s Giants victory parade, police could not provide basic information on which streets in lower Manhattan pedestrians could cross. The officers routinely sent people struggling to get to work to streets that turned out to be blocked by barricades and another set of less than helpful cops. A few years ago, I asked an officer at the Park Slope St. Patrick’s Day parade when it would begin and whether it would pass ourway (this time I wanted to go to the event ). “How should I know?” he demanded.
Is it rudeness or ignorance? When the police department and Department of Transportation sends its employees out to control these events, can’t it give them simple instructions about what roads are passable? Maps? Signs?
Any thoughts?
By Gail Robinson on May 5, 2008, 6:25 pmIn category: Gotham City, Transportation | 1 Comment »


May 5th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I hear you…but this is the city that brings you the MTA.