Various news outlets fanned out around Times Square to get comments from "men on the street" reacting to the news that, starting Memorial Day, Mayor Bloomberg will banish motor vehicles from Broadway, between 42nd and 47th streets and 33rd to 35th streets. Bloomberg says computer simulations determined that motorists will be able to cruise down Seventh Avenue 17% faster, and 37% more quickly up Sixth Avenue, once Broadway drivers stop interrupting traffic flow.

But random citizens, who presumably had little time to review the plan after it was announced yesterday, expressed dismay. Cab driver Hasem Zaid told CBS 2, "It's a bad idea you know, because the mayor wants to make life harder for working people."Speaking to the Post, air-conditioner repairman Tom Larsen opined, "He's nuts. He's creating more congestion. Streets are for cars, not picnic tables. It doesn't benefit anyone." But the Daily News tops them all by scoring an exclusive quote from the Naked Cowboy, who has dollar signs in his eyes: "The cars aren't adding anything, they're just driving by." Then there's reliably demagogic Post columnist Andrea Peyser, who wonders why Mayor Bloomberg "hates us so?"

For real New Yorkers - those of us who live, work and occasionally indulge in a cab ride home after enjoying a few too many - the plan to close off great swaths of this city from vehicular traffic is punishing, costly and downright mean. Now, those of us lucky enough to find a cab will be forced to take a puzzling series of detours that will jack up the price, the adrenaline and the blood pressure. Deliverymen, whom Bloomberg wanted to scar with congestion pricing, will wind up idling their engines in deep traffic to the point where Al Gore would not dare choke on city air.

But elsewhere in the tabloid

, reporters tested the $1.5 million plan by taking rush hour cab rides down Seventh Avenue and Broadway; even with Broadway open to vehicular traffic, the ride from 48th Street to 32nd down Seventh took only one minute longer than the Broadway trip, and cost less. Once Broadway's traffic is eliminated, Bloomberg argues Midtown will have "faster streets" because of longer green lights on Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Speaking to reporters yesterday, he said the current congestion "can't get worse. Have you ever tried to drive down Broadway? It's fundamentally something that you can't do."