May 11, 2006

Staten Island NASCAR Track


This next to the Staten Island Expressway? You gotta be kidding me!!

There's been a fair amount of talk recently about building an immense NASCAR track near the Goethals Bridge on Staten Island. This is beyond stupid for two principal reasons.

The first is the thought that anyone would spend one minute of their live watching or one dollar of their money paying to see a bunch of cars race around a noisy track.

The second is that the Goethals Bridge and the Staten Island Expressway that it feeds into are the most congested strips of road in all of New York City. The Goethals has two skinny lanes when it should have three full size lanes. The Staten Island Expressway carries far more traffic than it was designed for. Its a good day when the traffic moves slow. Most times and most days it is stop and go or just stop.

Now why would any horse's ass think it a good idea to build an immense car-racing stadium adjacent to the most congested roads in all of New York City? You got me.

The proponents of this bad idea have worked out a plan whereby each spectator would be forced to take mass transit of some kind. That would be the best way to make the race-day situation less bad, but it would still add many more vehicles --buses-- to the roads that cannot handle the volume of traffic that I have now.

Former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari has been on the payroll of the NASCAR proponents, but this idea is very unpopular on Staten Island. And now all three of Staten Island's City Council members have come out against the idea. Good move, guys.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey have u heard about the proposed race track at Floyd Bennent Field, there building a football stadium there.

Personally why build a race track in the middle of nowhere, traffic seems to be bad over there as it is, they got too many malls over there as it is, parking is limited, do they really need that, maybe a park instead...

WOLVERINE said...

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

What they should be buildin' is a second avenue tunnel! Flamin' gettin' clostrophobic on the goddam 6 train.

The Phantom said...

Wolverine

I ride the 6 myself a lot. The Lexington subway is indeed the worst of the worst.

WOLVERINE said...

Indeed. Only thing it's got going is it's frequency...which doesn't seem to alleviate the crowd AT ALL. Love to know how a train 2 minutes ahead of another can leave so many people STILL on the damn platforms.

The Phantom said...

j

You are correct. I am not qualified to speak about NASCAR. I'm just saying that it seems as exciting as watching paint dry.

WOLVERINE said...

I'll actually second that. Nothing more excitin' that watching a buncha cars race around in circles to th' left all day. And yeah, I have watched it and football and I have th' same opinion of both.

Anonymous said...

A race track would bring in revenue, revenue, and more revenue to the City. Infrastructure improvements would be made to all of the roads and bridges, and a blighted area in and around the bridge would be developed. And as far a a park goes, think of the fairgound the could be built in the racetrack area. A racetrack would be a huge benefit to the City of NY. The inconvenience of traffic during race week would happen once or twice a year depending on the events that would be run. Also, think of all of the tourist dollars that would be spent on hotels, restaurants, and related tourism. Your views are very narrow.

WOLVERINE said...

Very narrow or a clear understanding that while this may be th' greatest city in th' world we don't have th' ROOM fer every freakin' thing under th' sun to be here?

The Phantom said...

Just because we disagree does not mean that we're the ones with narrow views.

I don't know of anyone on Staten Island who is in favor of this thing, except Guy Molinari, and he is on the developers' payroll.

Guy and the people who tried to physically indimidate anti-track speakers at a hearing on Staten Island.

The only infrastructure development that would make any dent to the current permanent traffic gridlock is a new Goethals, a new Outerbridge Crossing, and a rail link on the north shore of Staten Island.

Guess what- none of this will happen anytime soon.

The only way this makes any economic sense is if there are a lot more than two weekends a year. Someone's bullshitting someboday, and noone who is not on the payroll is being fooled. Maybe its concerts maybe it is something else--something good in itself but not good in the single most congested corridor of all NYC Manhattan included.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you started posting again... in anticipation of my move to Bklyn, yours was the first blog I saved to my favorites!

WOLVERINE said...

You should also check out www.forgotten-ny.com for more Brooklyny (and NY) goodness. (And not, it's not mine, it's just a great site).

The Phantom said...

Forgotten NY is absolutely one of the best sites in NYC.