City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan — a k a The Thing That Ate Times Square — is on her way back for seconds.
New York’s bicycle belle has her eye on 34th Street this time, which she’s planning to transform into another teeming walrus wharf . . . er, pedestrian plaza.
She’s planning to swipe the entire block between Fifth and Sixth avenues, permitting only buses to pass through.
Nor will the chop stop there: 34th Street is to run eastbound only from Fifth Avenue, and westward from Sixth Avenue, rendering the road useless as a thoroughfare.
Which, of course, is precisely the point.
Sadik-Khan came to the Department of Transportation from a nonprofit do-goodnik shop hell-bent on “reducing car dependency” — that is, giving automobiles the old heave-ho from Manhattan.
And she’s made great progress with her mission — much to the city’s detriment.
Certainly her new plan would severely degrade one of New York’s premier commercial districts, for no discernible good purpose other than to give a boost to the lawn-chair and roller-blade industries.
Worse still, she’s proceeding with her $30 million scheme in secret and without a shred of real accountability.
Which is why it is critical that the City Council exert its every power to force Madame Bike-Lady to explain — publicly and in detail — what she has in mind, and precisely what its impact will be.
True, the council doesn’t have any authority over the DOT, but it can use its bully pulpit to shine a light on the department’s hush-hush maneuvers.
And this is vital: Sadik-Khan’s scheme should get at least as much scrutiny from the council as all the hobbyhorses its members ride to prevent economic growth.
The council’s quick as a wink to block useful development projects like the Kingsbridge Armory in The Bronx and a proposed Walmart in Brooklyn.
This time, it can do something to protect existing commerce — and jobs — from the wrath of Sadik-Khan.
The pedestrian-mall concept could only have bubbled up in the mind of someone either ignorant of the synergies that make great cities work — or contemptuous of them.
The fact that Mayor Bloomberg backs Sadik-Khan so strongly suggests that he doesn’t get it either.
Or doesn’t care.
So the matter is in the council’s hands.
What it does with it will be instructive.