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| Traffic has reached the point of no return. |
A "looming" traffic nightmare on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge is expected to boost mass transit use, The Record reports on Page 1 today, in belated recognition of the region's bus and rail service.
Car-centric coverage by the editors and their transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski, makes readers think "bus" and "train" are synonyms for the F-word.
Daily nightmare
Commuters are caught in traffic nightmares every weekday and an overburdened mass-transit system can't provide much relief now or in the immediate future, especially after Governor Christie killed a major expansion of rail service.
Buried in today's GWB story is a "never mind" on the massive traffic jams The Record predicted in March in connection with repair of Route 495, the so-called helix to the Lincoln Tunnel (A-4).
Now, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports, the Port Authority plans to do the work between 10:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. on weeknights, so the roadway can be reopened for the morning rush-hour commute.
Second bus lane?
But Boburg still has not asked agency officials why they have ignored repeated calls to add a second reverse lane into the tunnel to relieve crowding on Manhattan-bound buses.
The best thing on A-1 today is a touching obituary for Steve and Polly Gerdy, a Little Falls couple married for 64 years. They died 17 hours apart in separate hospitals.
Keep on trucking
Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes ordered an artistic photo of an overturned truck in Fort Lee blown up as big as possible to fill a huge hole on the front of the Local news section (L-1).
Sykes also needed stories about an OTB parlor and a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Giants and Jets to plug other holes in municipal-news coverage (L-1 and L-3).
Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin helped cover a hearing in Superior Court -- the only connection to her beat being the location of the courthouse (A-1).
Second look
One driver who contributes to daily congestion is Irvin Gordon, a Long Island man who claims to have rolled up nearly 3 million miles in his 1966 Volvo.
On Monday's A-5, a photo shows an overweight Gordon wedged in the door of the sports coupe after years of driving from one fast-food restaurant to another and taking all of his meals there.
"Never mind"?
ReplyDeleteThat's what you should be saying:
The helix, the iconic corkscrew-shaped highway that feeds into the Lincoln Tunnel, will be closed overnight for more than a year beginning in August as it undergoes its most extensive repairs since it became an engineering marvel 70 years ago.
The helix approach to the Lincoln Tunnel will close overnight for more than a year starting this summer as it undergoes the most extensive repairs in its 70-year history.
That means motorists who use one of the world’s busiest tunnels during late-night or early-morning hours — between 10:30 p.m. and 5 a.m. weekdays — should consider an alternative route into midtown Manhattan, Port Authority officials say.
What I was trying to say is that the original helix-repair story was on Page 1, and made it sound much more serious in terms of disruptions than it is going to be.
ReplyDelete