Ronnie from Danbury, Conn., says it took him three hours to drive to Queens for the New York Mets’ season opener on Monday.
But that was only the beginning. Ronnie told WFAN’s “Boomer & Carton” show on Tuesday that the parking situation at Citi Field was so bad that he never even made it to the gates.
“Yesterday was a freakin’ ridiculous fiasco,” he said. “When we got there, the entire road around Citi Field was a parking lot. Nobody could get into the stadium, and that’s why there was nobody there (for first pitch).”
“By the time we could have maybe parked at the tennis center and bused in, it was already the fourth inning,” he added.
With Cirque du Soleil occupying part of their parking lot, the Mets were urging fans to take mass transit to Monday’s game against the Washington Nationals. Citi Field didn’t appear to be holding anywhere near the announced crowd of 42,442 by the time the game started at 1:10 p.m.
Linda from Flushing said she left her house at noon for the short trip to the ballpark. It took her about 15 minutes and then she snaked around the stadium “for an hour and a half, only to wind up parking by Home Depot.”
See the attached Mets press release (web content), which indicates that there would be NO Cirque du Soleil performance on Monday "to accommodate as many fans as possible". When there's a mall there instead of the circus, will the mall be shut down just as the circus was, "to accommodate as many fans as possible"? These angry Mets fans have to understand that circumstances will be much worse after a mall is operating there.
15 comments:
Well they both should have just taken the train, would have saved them the trouble of finding a place to park.
"If you can't be an athlete, you can always be an athletic supporter." - Jacques Schtreppe, French existentialist philosopher
There will be no mall. It's DOA.
If you live in Queens, it can actually be a very difficult and long commute by mass transit to Citifield!
If you live in flushing why dont you just take the bus or train to citifield? That was a dumb move on Linda's part!
Anyone with an iota of sense knows that the Mets are a real estate deal disguised as a baseball team.
Boycott The Mets.
who drives to CitiField from Flushing?
talk about elistist.
MNR from danbury and 7 train to Citi takes a lot less than 3 hours
it's amazing that too many people driving vehicles that are more than 50 square feet created a traffic jam , especially when they all planned to arrive at the same time
between the 7 and LIRR it's pretty easy to take the train to Citi
You folks are missing the point. If there's gridlock now with a circus, there will be worse gridlock with a mall.
There has always been gridlock at Mets games a few times a year. Subway series, opening day, playoffs if they make it, maybe a few other games but that's about it. The infrastructure can't support that many cars moving around. The rest of the season with a mall won't be that bad, won't be as bad as opening day has always been without one. And opening day probably won't be much worse - the mall might not close, but a lot of people will think twice about driving during big mets games, and some people who currently drive will switch to transit, where you have capacity to move some extra people. This sort of use isn't static, it's dynamic. It'll all work out. There may be reasons not to build the mall, say if money is around to turn the asphalt into a park, but opening day for the Mets isn't one of them.
If the city isn't willing to fund parks, turning a parking lot into something that makes money, with a fair bit of it going to the park wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, although in this case they should be required to include a wide pedestrian/cycling path (a different kind of 'mall') to connect the rest of the park to the waterfront. It's a pain to travel between the two right now. Could actually work out for them, makes the area more of a destination, and drives a lot of ped/bike traffic by their shops.
Gridlock happens during:
Opening day.
The subway series.
Any weekend.
Every day during the US Open.
A mall here will suck. And how will a mall survive there if people can't drive to it?
"If there's gridlock now..."
Crapster:
To paraphrase a baseball movie quote, "If you build it they will come."
If the mall gets approved the politics of the city will dictate the enhancement of the surrounding infrastructure with exit and entrance ramps, wider streets, improved LIRR and 7 train service, etc. And then the city will allow for the development of the Flushing Bay shore line. And then more and more and....
The city and developers and crooks march on. Boss Tweed would love it.
On what day will 20,000 cars converge on the mall at exactly 12 noon?
Mall traffic is more staggered.
Besides once they clear out willets point there will be plenty of parking.
20,000 cars will converge every time there is a daytime Mets game. If this is a weekend, there will be a lot of mall traffic.
Only a small portion of Willets Point is being cleared out, not enough to make up for the parking lost at CitiField.
The lot across on Roosevelt is a disgrace! Lousy pavement and virtually no lighting.And how about paving 126 st and Shea road!?
Post a Comment