Monday, September 24, 2007

Traffic NYC style

It's UN week in the city and all the important people of the world have come to play, like worms in an apple. There are 192 member states of the United Nations, and as far as I know Norway alone has about 100 people scurrying the hallways. So if all the 192 member states each have the same amount of people, that means we have an invasion of about 200 000 new people in UN attendees alone. And that’s not counting the people who work for the people who are attending, making sure their schedule is up to par, the Secret Service and the bodyguards traveling with the higher ups, and the media here for the event. To top it off, these people are all staying within a 20 block radius of the UN, which means pretty much all in the same spot as half the radius goes into the East River, and the higher ups all have to travel in motorcades due to the fact that, well, they need to enforce a certain amount of security to make sure these heads of state don’t get into trouble. So the whole mid-section of the city is jammed by motorcades long as a city block packed with guns and protective eyes, each with a police escort to make traffic shy away, although the only other vehicles on the road to cause traffic are other motorcades equally long, also with a police escort to keep traffic away. Due to these chains of cars all traveling within 20 blocks of each other, everyone in a hurry with important meetings to attend, you get something so rare as a motorcade traffic jam.