A steady stream of Q33 buses started rolling up and down Roosevelt Avenue at 5 PM Tuesday. Few people boarded them. The route links two points that are closed for business. The northern terminus is LaGuardia Airport which took on heavy storm surge from Flushing Bay. The southern end point of the Q33 is the Roosevelt Avenue subway station which is encircled with actual red tape. The five subway lines that run through there are closed. One line (the F) is scheduled to start up partial service there tomorrow.
The piecemeal resumption of public transit is better than nothing I guess. But so much of the way the masses in this city move about relies on linkage. Bus to train. Train to train. Bus to airport. Etc.
I jumped in a black car bound for Long Island City last night to meet a friend for a cocktail. The driver said business is slow. He said people are staying home. Downed trees and inoperative street lights in Queens altered the driver’s route. This is territory considered generally free of major damage yet it’s anything near normal looking. At the bar, the lone employee who opened the establishment struggled to make drinks fast enough for a neighborhood crowd eager to numb feelings of uncertainty.
The sharp increase in vehicular traffic prompted by loss of public transit is starting to choke popular routes of movement. A rider on an uptown bus Wednesday afternoon told channel 4 it took her three hours to get from Canal up to 59th. If the Mayor wants to make lower Manhattan a bit more sane right now, he’d ban most vehicular below the 30’s altogether.
The ability of local news helicopters to operate Wednesday has shined a lot of light on the dark outcome of the storm’s destruction on Staten Island, Rockaway peninsula, Hoboken, Long Beach (NY and NJ) and the Jersey coast. It’s staggering to absorb the vastness of decimated infrastructure when viewed from above.
Speaking without partisan motives, it seems clear the incumbent seeking re-election to the land’s highest office benefits from the opportunity to assert crisis leadership and tangible action available to him. Obama once called this city his home. Not that anybody in these parts is much interested in tiresome tit for tat posturing between two political campaigns but Obama has more helpful assistance levers to pull right now. The challenger must walk on eggshells while his advisers probably wish he could be chipping away on issues that suddenly seem trivial. A virtual suspension in traditional forms of campaigning may run right up to election day. It was an October surprise made not by man. And it likely will prove to seal an outcome in favor of Obama.
Some have suggested Jersey governor Chris Christie’s praise of the President’s accessibility and responsiveness in the storm’s immediate aftermath was a set-up for a later pivot by a prominent Romney ally. I don’t doubt part of Christie’s makeup feels political opportunity but I believe his assertion that he could give a damn about all that right now. His blunt assessment that the tasks at hand trump the machinations of determining the presidential race appear genuine. Christie’s effort to lift spirits through round-the-clock on-scene assurances of an orderly recovery in the most heavily damaged zones contrast with more business-like inside-ops schedules adhered to by Bloomberg and Cuomo.
It would be fascinating to consider what would be happening right now had Christie sought and won the GOP nomination rather than Mitt Romney. Imagine application of the current situation to a neck-and-neck race between Christie and Obama.
But forget politics. Really. You sit here and watch the news and see people who lost everything. The families in Breezy Point who now see a burnt-out tight-knit neighborhood still smoldering. The marina owner in Merrick who says a hundred boats docked at his facility are now scattered all over his broken community. The seniors in Rockaway who sit in their blacked out high-rises with no running water and without access to their home health care aides. The business owners and on-the-margin hourly workers who don’t have a job to go to anytime soon.
The operator of LaGuardia Airport is offering no hint on when planes will fly there next. A co-worker told me today he’s ready to load bags again but doesn’t know when he’ll get that chance. He observed mounds of washed-up solid sewage waste from the bay scattered across the now mostly-dry surface used to park aircraft. Another employee said this morning he stood ready to assist customers re-book on computers that have come back to life – but that non-airport personnel were not being allowed in the facility.
The already ill-maintained LaGuardia terminal buildings suffered yet-to-be fully assessed additional damage from the storm.
Kennedy Airport is limping back to life today and I’ll try to catch a bird to LA tomorrow morning in an attempt to make the Breeder’s Cup at Santa Anita this weekend. It’ll be a long shot effort to find an empty seat given the massive backlog of people trying to get out of town. Part of me doesn’t want to leave at a time that’s so uncertain in so many ways. When you hear the grief-stricken accounts of people facing such difficulty, it definitely hurts. The deep connection one feels with those impacted in these parts doesn’t really reveal itself until you see their suffering and fear about what lies ahead.