How to avoid being roadkill in the Big Apple

Anyone who lives or works in New York knows it can be a daily dance with death just crossing the street.

I never understood people who exclaim when crossing the street, “I have the right of way!”

Yes, you may, but the driver may be going the wrong way or drunk or stoned or texting, or just plain speeding.

Some even bang on the hoods of the cars turning in the crosswalk, which I don’t recommend.

When I’m walking down a busy street in New York (aren’t they all?), I’m tacking as far away from traffic as possible, so much so that I have to watch when people are emerging from doorways.

It’s an approach that works in the subway as well, where you can stand back and watch people inexplicably wait in the rubberized yellow caution area at the edge of the platform — for no good reason.

When Mike Bloomberg was mayor, he was a proponent of pedestrian plazas, such as the ones we have in Herald Square on 34th Street and in a good chunk of Times Square.

There was a fleeting moment a couple of years ago when the city reconsidered the traffic pattern for Times Square (i.e., allowing more vehicles), but luckily, sanity prevailed.

There also has been a movement for “congestion pricing”, in which vehicles that travel south of 60th Street in Manhattan during business hours will have to pay more. There is an equally vociferous contingent on the other side. That would include delivery trucks, food, merchandise, every good that needs to be funneled through this pulsating city.

What, you don’t want to eat?

In my New York, there would be only subways, bicycles, buses, cabs, Ubers, Lyfts and private limos. Isn’t that enough?

My ideal New York would have an elevated light rail ringing Manhattan, and all the goods would be routed through a dedicated underground commercial railway — the subway.

I could see straphangers seething when considering how the beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s flails to maintain subway service at a passable level.

I didn’t say this rerouting would happen in 2018, but maybe by 2118?

The great cities of the world need to remain walkable, as New York once was in horse-and-buggy days. The automobile has left a massive footprint on this city and many others.

But now technology has brought us the age of electronic vehicles and sophisticated trains (Hey, where are our high-speed trains in the US?), leading more to question the viability of smoke-belching vehicles barreling down thronged streets.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com