The NY Post is in the midst of a full-on assault against NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, because the right-wing rag loves the internal combustion engine, doesn't believe in climate change, and hates change. The tabloid has made no secret of its contempt for bike lanes and pedestrian plazas; therefore the DOT's ambitious proposal for 34th Street has the paper apoplectic. Following up on her colleague Steve Cuozzo's rant last week, Post columnist Andrea Peyser turns up the rhetoric to 11 today:
Is Janette Sadik-Khan, the psycho bike lady who helms the city's Department of Transportation, nuts? Or maybe Khan, the hater of the internal-combustion engine, is just an incompetent, overpromoted, overzealous bureaucrat who wields power like a chain saw and fits her widely whispered nickname to a T—Janette "Sadist"-Khan. Either way, we're screwed.
At issue is a project bigger than the detested, dangerous bike lanes and despised pedestrian plazas that have sprouted up like a cancer, to applause from Mayor Bloomberg. The new plan is Sadik-Khan's crowning achievement. Her Taj Mahal. Her Coney Island fun house. It's called the 34th Street Transitway. And as plans reveal, it's a doozy -- meant to surrender that main Midtown thoroughfare to buses while preventing passenger cars from traveling it from the Lincoln Tunnel to the Midtown Tunnel.
The DOT wants to essentially cut 34th Street in half, with the section west of Sixth Avenue running one way toward the Hudson River, and the section east of Fifth Avenue running one way toward the East River. Buses would travel in both directions in their own special lanes, and in the middle there would be a pedestrian plaza on the block between Fifth and Sixth. A spokesman tells Peyser the plan is moving forward, and she's freaking out because "Sadist"-Khan has her handcuffed in her dungeon and she can't remember the safe word! Meanwhile, her colleague Steve Cuozzo is holding the line against the Times Square pedestrian plaza, tweeting: "Times Square an alien planet on Sunday night, and the aliens' favorite spots to hang are the 'pedestrian malls.' We don't need crop circles." Says you, Cuozz.
To add some outside vitriol, Peyser also gets some angry quotes from a 34th Street resident, who is apparently an expert on traffic and has determined that the changes would only speed up bus service by "a measly one or two minutes." This man gripes, "I can't get my bottled water, 30 pounds of Goya beans and my 3-year-old and 1-year-old inside because the city has determined that a one-minute improvement is more important for a guy from Ronkonkoma!" We're not sure what this has to do with Ronkonkoma (is the tabloid's traffic expert from Long Island?) but who has the patience to conduct point-by-point analysis of the Post's subliterate propaganda? Miraculously, Streetsblog does. Spoiler alert: The NY Post is full of shit!
