Return of NYC dining sheds is a calamity waiting to happen — the DOT must stop the insanity
The Department of Transportation’s petty bureaucrats — who gave us infinitely extended bike lanes and ugly, traffic-congesting “plazas” – have won again.
The DOT’s eagerness even to consider allowing new outdoor dining sheds downtown where they block fire lanes is cause for President Trump’s axe-man Elon Musk to dissolve the bloated agency that puts its warped priorities ahead of all other issues – including public safety.
The power-mad DOT has been out of control for years, ever since former Mayor Mike Bloomberg first gave it free rein to run roughshod over other city agencies.
The FDNY’s “reluctant” agreement to allow a “conditional waiver” for new alfresco sheds on a “case-by-case basis” proves that even “The Bravest” turns to jelly before the all-powerful DOT.
What can they possibly be thinking in allowing new roadway sheds in some of Manhattan’s narrowest, West Village streets?
The DOT took its sweet time — at least two years after there was any legitimate need for 13,000 roadway sheds— before it got around to cracking down on the crime- and vermin-breeding monstrosities.
The new rules made licensing, design, and seasonal requirements for replacement so complicated that few restaurateurs applied for them.
A few responsible uptown owners did apply, such as at Fresco by Scotto in Midtown and Orsay on upper Lexington Avenue.
If approved, their new sheds, smaller and more safely constructed than the old ones, would stand on straight and wide blocks where fire trucks and emergency vehicles could get to the scene before it was too late.
But letting them back onto the West Village’s and Chinatown’s twisting lanes, and the narrow ones of Little Italy, is a calamity waiting to happen. Many streets are so narrow that even ordinary car drivers slow to a crawl lest they clip pedestrians or other vehicles.
Eatery owners who want their sheds back care only about adding seats while paying only a pittance in license fees – more than nothing as during the pandemic but still much, much less than actual rent would cost them for a larger indoor space.
That no fatal crashes occurred downtown during the first round of sheds means nothing.
There were no fatal air-to-air collisions at Washington, DC’s, poorly managed Ronald Reagan Airport, either – until there was one.
It’s time for City Hall (if anyone’s still in charge) to smack down the DOT before it has blood on its hands.
