This post is entitled “On Traffic” since I feel like I’m in traffic most of the time! Traffic is different depending on where you live. The traffic in Manhattan is different than the traffic in say, Dallas, TX or Boulder, CO. When you live in New York, especially Long Island, you know what it’s like to sit in traffic for hours at a standstill. Sometimes, you even feel like you’re in a parking lot and could walk faster.
At HJMT, we have three offices — Manhattan, Westbury and Rochester, so I travel often. Today, I was traveling into the City. My first stop was the Queens Museum of Art, where I am an affiliate Board Member. A friend of mine is on the Board and he told me that the museum could use my help, so I met up with some folks there in the spring. They took me on a tour and I was so impressed that I wanted to get involved.
This was my first time at the Queens Museum of Art and I saw some neat stuff that I had never seen before, like the Panorama of NYC, set in a gymnasium type room with the entire city laid out to scale with bridges, tunnels and even active airports. Apparently, it was used in the World’s Fair in 1964 and they kept it in great shape. It was originally built by Robert Moses. The Panorama is a 9,335 square foot model of every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs. There are a total of 895,000 individual structures. It’s incredible and definitely worth seeing!
The last time I toured the facility, the Pepsi Challenge was on display. It was interesting to learn that Coke catered to white Anglo Saxon Americans while Pepsi took the more diverse route. Today, there were dozens of school children ranging from 8 to 13 looking at Tiffany glass, that was originally made in Queens. They were also doing art projects and taking tours. There was a lot of going on!
The Queens Museum of Art is a great place to go because they have very different exhibits than the Manhattan Art Museum counterparts. The only bad thing about going to the museum today was that there was an enormous amount of traffic. It took more than an hour to get from my house in Long Beach to Garden City! I left at 8 am and got to the Museum at 10 am! On normal days, from my house in Long Beach to the Queens Museum of Art only takes about 40 minutes.
Getting back to traffic, I think you just have to zone out and not think about it, because otherwise you will certainly pull out your hair! Driving into the city from the Museum wasn’t that bad, it still took plenty of time because of the rain. I was a little nervous that I would miss my 12:30 pm appointment in midtown but as I was getting close to the midtown tunnel, I got a call from my office saying that my 12:30 needed to reschedule. I had a sigh of relief. Well, at least I could take my time getting in, I thought.
It was certainly a busy day. When I finally arrived in Manhattan, between proofing activity reports for all of our clients, preparing for our 3 pm new business meeting, answering questions from the staff, and writing a letter to a potential client, I felt like I was juggling a lot!
At around 7:30 pm, Allie and I headed home. We figured that there would be no traffic at that point. To our surprise, there was a ton of traffic — bumper to bumper traffic! I was feeling really frustrated at that point. I just wanted to get home. I tried to calm myself down by listening to Satellite Radio, which helped but it still wasn’t fun…
I started to think about Robert Moses and how he built all of these roadways through Long Island. I started to think that someone should have come up with a plan to handle more traffic by making roadways on top of each other, almost like a double decker bus or train. There’s got to be a better way to handle all this congestion. And I don’t think that imposing another tax on drivers is going to help. I also started to think about those commuters who drive in every day. How can they stay calm and relaxed when driving is so hectic!
I love driving. I would much rather take the car then the train into the city. Luckily, I only go into the city twice a week. So for twice or even three times a week, I could try to “zone out” and be like every other commuter!
