Give My Regards to Broadway

By John J. Cox
A Resident of Woodside

When I was a child I played with erector sets, Lincoln Logs, Tonker toys, train sets and other items that let you fantasize that you were the grand builder of cities. It was great fun.

But when I became a man, to cite St. Paul and most recently President Obama, I put away childish things.

Which brings us to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, North America's answer to South America's Hugo Chavez. Here for all to see are the evident ramifications of a frustrated childhood. Even Donald Trump must go to bed each night wishing that it was he, and not our beloved, if ego maniacal, Bloomy who got to use the City of New York as his own little plaything.

First it was a West Side stadium. Then it was congestion pricing. In between there was the ban on smoking and trans fat and a host of other such proposals, such as a surcharge for supermarket plastic bags and restrictions on the use of salt. Now it is the closing of Broadway in Midtown Manhattan so that it can be used exclusively as pedestrian space. Where it may finally end is anyone's guess. When you permit a frustrated child to impose his personal dictates on millions of people, unchecked by a worthless City Council, there is no telling how far he can and will go.

Never mind that the traffic downtown along Seventh Avenue, to reach among other venues places like Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, is and for decades has been, painfully clogged. Never mind that the alternative artery downtown will be Ninth Avenue, which is the access to and from the Lincoln Tunnel and the Port Authority bus terminal. Never mind that the congestion this will create, with its attendant pollution, is one of the very same reasons cited by this hypocrite Mayor when he advocated congestion pricing. After all, dictators need not worry about such inconsistencies.

But I will admit that in at least one regard this plan is an improvement. Not long ago, in his ceaseless efforts to Europeanize New York City, the Mayor cordoned off a portion of Broadway in the vicinity of West 40th Street. He narrowed the avenue and created a plaza on the avenue's east side. He put some tables and chairs there so that, presumably, people could utilize the space to relax, converse, read and eat lunch. The problem is that this little plaza juts out into the middle of Broadway, with no meaningful barriers to protect the plaza-users from the onslaught of downtown traffic, which of course includes MTA buses, trucks operated by Teamsters, and taxis driven by mad Russians, Arabs and recently laid off stock brokers. I don't know about you, but sitting amidst all this to peacefully eat lunch does little to ease the digestion.

But now this problem will be solved.

And I think we should expand the program. We should insist that the route the Mayor takes to work be closed to traffic. This should be no big deal to the Mayor because, as a true man of the people, he takes the subway to City Hall each morning--except for the route between his luxury apartment and the subway station. You see, the Mayor is chauffeured there in a gas-guzzling SUV. But I'm confident that the Mayor will exempt himself from the new law--and that the City Council will endorse the exemption. End of another problem.