More scintillating infrastructure news

A sculpture by J. Seward Johnson at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack was modeled after one of The Record's local-news editors.

Only an engineer could love the front page of The Record today, dominated as it is by the demolition of a Route 3 bridge and much hand-wringing over a tight turn for tractor-trailers in Little Falls (A-1).

But there's more on the front of Local, where the Road Warrior column again gives voice to complainers, whiners and crackpots who seem to have suddenly discovered North Jersey's antiquated road system (L-1).

Along with duplication, inefficiency and high property taxes, our home-rule system has saddled us with dangerous railroad crossings and narrow local roads that haven't been updated much since the 1960s.

You'd think the brilliant journalists at the Woodland Park daily would have called for wider, safer roads a couple of decades ago. But you'd be wrong.

Humoring morons

Instead, transportation writers like Cichowski, desperate to fill space, humor every moron behind the wheel who sends in a bitchy e-mail about traffic congestion or roads with too many intersections or whatever -- no matter how exaggerated or inaccurate.

Years after the lack of mass transit gave us traffic congestion of nightmarish proportions, the only staffer who writes consistently about trains and buses is Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.

That's because he takes them, as is evident from his column today on the reopened Hoboken Terminal (A-13).

But even Doblin has written more about mass transit since Superstorm Sandy hit on Oct. 29 than in all the years before -- no surprise at a car-centric newspaper that relies so heavily on advertising revenue from automobile dealers.


Another correction


On A-2 today, a correction acknowledges that Editor Liz Houlton's copy editors missed a major error in a graphic that appeared on Thursday's front page.

On L-3 today, a photo caption stated incorrectly that "a flapping billboard halted traffic on Route 17 south," when, in fact, the loose vinyl billboard prompted police to close the road. 

Local yokels

The Local section contains Teaneck news (L-1), but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, couldn't find anything to report about Hackensack.

Mile-long menu

In Better Living, the centerfold restaurant review makes a fusion restaurant in Wyckoff called Aoyama sound awful (BL-14 and 15).

Readers wonder why the paper didn't just run a few paragraphs of warning.

Fans of Wondee's, Lotus Cafe, So Gong Dong and other places with Thai, Chinese or Korean menus got a belly laugh from co-owner Helena Hsue, who said, apparently with a straight face, "It's impossible to stay open with one Asian cuisine."

Readers also wonder why the review was written by Julia Sexton, a restaurant critic for Westchester Magazine.