WPCNR BUMPER-TO-BUMPER. News Commentary By John F. Bailey. November 12: Hey, Mr. and Mrs. White Plains were any of you in the secret jam Wednesday night? The jam no one knew about?  The White Plains crosstown gridlock? Not pleasant was it?

Bring Back Officer Bill (Biolsi). We need a Traffic Directing Consultant NOW. Photo WPCNR News Archive.

But the White Plains Department of Public Safety did not do all they could have to expedite traffic across downtown White Plains last Wednesday night in this reporter’s opinion. In this reporter’s personal observation from 5:45 P.M. to 7 P.M. – they did nothing.

Hey – if you had a heart attack or your house caught fire and you lived in the Park Circle Section of town or North Broadway – you were dead or burned out because there was no way fire engines were getting into the Northend in 4 minutes and no way ambulances were getting into the Northend past Hamilton. Perhaps Fire Station One could have handled you. It was a dangerous situation if you had a health emergency.

This is why you have to make a token attempt at directing traffic through the White plains downtown, Department of Public Safety. I do not fault the White Plains officers – I fault the management of the department.

The WP Department of Public Safety was asked Friday morning by yours truly why they could not have dispatched some “traffic specialists” – they did not respond. They should start giving traffic control response some serious thought.

Informed sources have told us that the police feel it is too dangerous for police officers to “person” the intersections in gridlock conditions because motorists do not pay heed to the officers. Come on, Department of Public Safety!

Officer Bill -- We need you now! Off-duty White Plains police stand by street construction routinely risking hip-pointer shots from passing cars weekly, so don't tell me directing traffic in gridlock conditions is too dangerous for our guys and gals. That's insulting to them. They want to help. Perhaps we should bring back Officer Bill Biolsi (shown at his retirement in March, 2005)  who used to honcho Bank Street and Main for many years. Where’s a Wag-and-Whistle Swat Team when you need them? Officer Biolsi took care of business at Main and Bank for years with his white gloves and whistle and it moved. Photo, WPCNR News Archive.

To not move officers into position to address developing gridlock from unusual traffic conditions is not good practice. The only answer is the White Plains Department of Public Safety just does not care about the motorist plight.

In New York City the brown shirt traffic specialists are out there nightly. If the police monitored traffic in coordination with the Traffic Department it has got to help somewhat.

How could the police have helped Wednesday night? They could have held traffic back on Central Park Avenue, and cleared out gluts of cars onto the relatively wide open route 119 just past the County Center. Believe me I thought it would be backed up clear across Route 119 to Tarrytown Wednesday evening considering how traffic was not movin’ on Hamilton Avenue.

But, I was shocked, shocked I tell you when I passed Comp USA and bingo – we started to move as soon as we motored into Greenburgh. Lousy job, Department of Public Safety. A Police Officer at each intersection moving them out and through, would have helped just a little Wednesday night.

What could they do? Move traffic out. Keep lanes moving. Coordinate better with the County Transportation Monitoring Center. Since this motorist was stuck in the Hamilton gridlock Wednesday night, WPCNR had ascertained the traffic lights were 30 seconds in length, but you needed more than that to handle that volume. There was no flooding on Hamilton Avenue. It was all volume.

Need I point out that we have spent millions of dollars on coordination communications between county and local police departments? How about developing a plan on how to use it?

If you can’t control traffic and move it with extra volume, how can you do it in an emergency?

The Department of Public Safety has great personnel and we love you all, but I believe the Department of Public Safety has lost its ability to communicate with the public effectively to ease emergencies. Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety Daniel Jackson is trying, but his hands are tied. He is just one person trying to do hands-on control of developing situations and handle public information at the same time. WPCNR deliberately does not badger the Department of Public Safety during developing situations to allow them to handle it.

However, that is no excuse for the do-nothing Mayor’s Office press spokespersons for not knowing what is going on at a given point in time. You cannot contact an official of White Plains after 5:30 PM.  

They either do not know what is going on or do not care to tell the press at least what is happening. Because they don’t. Do a little work guys. Give out cell-phone numbers to all media and have one person in charge who knows what’s going on. This worked a little with Dave Maloney on the last big Con Ed outage. David tried his best. But they obviously do not know how to do it. They need to find out how to do it. Or let Bud Nicoletti and Tom Soyk handle it. If the Police are too busy to advise the citizenry, the Mayor’s Office must.

How about a real-time White Plains traffic alerts on the moribund Department of Public Safety website, for example? It’s not much, but it’s a start. How about a tapeloop number the public can call for construction sites in the city blocking traffic?  How about a Mayors’ Office who knows what’s happening in its own city in real time? That would be a start. This is nothing new. I have pointed this out for years. Reading about it the next day in paper media does not deal in real time.

These are issues that a Common Council and a Traffic Commission that was paying any attention to the welfare of its residents might, just might call the Traffic Department, the Parking Department, the Public Works Department and the Department of Public Safety and get them on the same page and tell them get your acts together. Last Wednesday night was pathetic. No trees were down in the road. There was electricity. There was no flooding in White Plains except on Bronx River Parkway. It was just heavy traffic. Mind you the shopping season is coming up. Does White Plains have a plan?

Traffic is a quality of life issue, too. Besides look at the revenue potential, Department of Public Safety for writing all those cellular telephone tickets for persons using a cellphone with their bare hands during one of those slow downs. This could be a new Department of Public Safety revenue initiative.

As they say south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Git ‘er done.

As for the chimpanzees at the Department of Transportation – could any chimp tell this reporter why we are redoing all of the Cross Westchester Expressway bridges now – when we are going to have to do it all over again when and if we rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge and plug in light rail? Hoo Boy!

Seems like wasted work to me. Why build new bridgeovers if you’re going to ream light rail across the Cross Westchester Expressway?

I’ll take an answer from any bright press person on that one.

And, another question, you need a more intelligent group of chimpanzees to plan the Tappan Zee Bridge-Cross Westchester Corridor fix coming up – because if the Exit 8 make over  is any example of how the present Zippy engineers at DOT think – well I shudder to think.

However the Common Council should be thinking about it. White Plains and Andy and Bill Ryan and the whole chummy concerned County Gang have to seize the DOT and Eliot Spitzer by their overalls and Brook Brothers lapels and get a handle on what is going on, before Eliot allows the DOT to turn Central Westchester into what happened when Robert Moses ripped The Bronx apart with the Cross Bronx Expressway.