Last week’s post-Sandy subway and commuter rail shutdown sent armies of riders above ground, into cars and buses — creating a real Trafficgeddon.
But don’t blame Mother Nature alone.
Other culprits: Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Bloomberg and an anti-car agenda that’s produced bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, mid-street parking — you name it. Anything to make life a paradise for cyclists and pedestrians. And hell for motorists.
Bloomberg admits it: “The streets were there to transport people,” he said, just pre-Sandy. “Cyclists and pedestrians and bus riders are as important, if not . . . more important than automobile riders.”
We wonder if he believes that post-Sandy.
And if the hundreds of thousands of motorists paralyzed for hours last week agree.
Actually, as a cop directing traffic in lower Manhattan told The Post, bike lanes and plazas “have been a problem since they were put in.” The river-to-river post-storm traffic just highlighted the problem.
But let’s be honest: Motor vehicles are vital to New York — from buses to taxis to commercial trucks to, yes, personal cars.
And yet, Sadik-Khan’s 2009 “Street Design Manual” includes a chapter on what it calls “traffic calming.” Or, as cops call it sotto voce, planned traffic jams.
Officials dealt with Wednesday’s road nightmare fairly quickly (though the checkpoints set up to enforce the three-riders-per-car rule created huge new delays outside Manhattan). Subways and commuter trains were largely back within days, too.
But what if there’s another storm?
Or worse, a terrorist attack?
These “traffic-calming” measures may be fanciful indulgences for a bored billionaire and a space-cadet transportation commissioner, but they’re serious inconveniences for average New Yorkers in good times.
In crises, they’re dangerous horrors.
Après-Sandy, someone needs to ask Sadik-Khan: Was traffic calm enough?