“If you have one fare to go to the theater district, your day or night is finished,” said Fhahidul Hossain, a cabdriver and part-time dispatcher at City Transport Management. “A 10-minute fare is going to take you an hour or so. It’s a nightmare.”
And Mr. Hossain offered what amounted to a cri de coeur for drivers who believe that the union of automobiles and Midtown — in all its exhaust-filled, horn-honking glory — is a coupling that cannot be quietly undone.
“In Manhattan, you have to move, man. You cannot do it like this,” he said. “This is not Europe. This is New York City, for God’s sake!”
Meanwhile, Janette Sadik-Khan, the Bozo transportation commissioner, called it a "Picasso" in the making.
DOT Commish and Great Diktator, Sadik-Khan, has the nerve to compare her hippy vision of Copenhagen to Pablo Picasso, a 20th century master and cultural icon.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you picked up on it too.
Her arrogance and hubris is incredible.
She wants to turn the Crossroads of the World into a midwestern mall, complete with tacky beach chairs and orange cones for the tourists and homeless to enjoy. This project is the final Disneyfication of Times Square
Bring back the pimps and porno shops. Send Sadik-Khan and Disney down to Orlando
I photographed Times square in 1959
ReplyDeleteand we thought it kind of ugly and crass then, Now it's worse that Hell.
Has anybody really looked at it lately and said how can anything so
visually ugly happen?
Tokio's Ginza stip is horrid but kind
of in an artistic way ,not this though.
This is still a mixed bag for me. Sure, the idea of Bloomberg Beach is a terribly orchestrated one at that, at least for the moment. I wouldn't mind seeing the immediate area surrounding Duffy Square be converted into green space. That area is notoriously jammed to the brim with tourists and would benefit with a miniature park of sorts, and not just the bewildering TKTS red stairs which leads to nowhere.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this ruins what little historic fabric that Times Square has as being the acclaimed crossroads of the world. Although to many New Yorkers, it is not that at all. It is DisneyLand smack dab in the middle of New York City and people do come primarily for that fact and to catch minor glimpses of other gentrified neighborhoods.
Hold on to what you can, not like midtown is a big destination for any self-respecting inhabitant of the city. The cabbies will survive, and maybe they'll even learn to drive into other boroughs too! Ha, last time I try asking one to take me to Jamaica, only to earn some unpleasant looks.
Cabs should be phased out anyway. The subway is in more dire need of funding, rennovation, and is far more economical and environmentally friendly than cabs ever were.
Why should it be easy to get around via car in this city when there's so many public transportation options? I could give a fck if it takes 2 hours to drive across town; walk, bike, ride the subway, take a bus. WTF is "exhaust filled, honking glory" anyway and why should we want something that kills pedestrians and generally makes the city unlivable, I'd take the bustle of people and public transit over dehumanizing cars anyday. This doesn't have to have anything to do with "disneyfication", being able to get around w/o a car is a distinctly urban phenomenon in this country, if the porn stores and strip joints were still around, this move would only help their business. Sadik Khan actually cares about keeping this city a city a not retreading the same car centric ground that has created the suburbs and shopping malls we all live here to avoid.
ReplyDelete