By Barry Owens

As traffic tie-ups in New York City go, the tiny tangle that drivers run into most weekday mornings on South End Avenue in Battery Park City must seem trifling. It usually involves fewer than a dozen cars backed up no more than a hundred yards at any given time. Still, Gateway Plaza residents who find themselves pinned in by the mini traffic jam say it is hazardous for drivers and pedestrians alike.

"It's very dangerous and very disruptive," said Gateway Plaza resident Ellen Lambros. "It's dangerous because you're dodging cars when you're trying to get in a cab." This block of South End Avenue just below Liberty Street, which includes the entrance to the garage in Gateway Plaza, is getting more traffic these days because two former parking lots

nearby have become construction sites. Trouble is, the stretch of road where the cars queue for the garage has long been the site of the neighborhood's only taxi stand. Now, curbside cabs are often hemmed in by the stream of cars turning into Gateway Plaza, and frustrated drivers who are not going to the garage maneuver to the middle of the street, sometimes into oncoming traffic, to break free of the jam.

"We felt it was dangerous—is dangerous," James Cavanaugh, president and CEO of the Battery Park City Authority, told Community Board 1's Battery Park City Committee last month. He said that the authority had received complaints about the traffic, but that it had no jurisdiction over the street.

The authority therefore had asked the city's Department of Transportation to find a way to ease congestion on the block to reduce the traffic hazard. The DOT's solution was to post a traffic officer on the street to shoo away the cabs, creating a wider lane for commuter cars. Not surprisingly, that did not go over well with building residents who rely on the cabs to get to work and school in the morning.

"We don't have the kind of streets where you can raise your hand and get a cab," said Gateway Plaza resident and BPC Committee member Tom Goodkind. "The minute they hear [the taxi stand] is gone, they will not come back," he said, speaking of the drivers.

Linda Belfer, chairwoman of the committee, spoke more forcefully.

"There is no way in hell we're going to put up with residents being inconvenienced because Gateway wants to make more money at their garage," she said.

The cabs were allowed to return to the stand shortly after the meeting.

The authority hopes to find a new location for the taxi stand, perhaps on Liberty Street, but first it will hire a consultant to study the traffic flow on the street, an authority spokeswoman said late last month.
"They just have to make up their mind what they're going to do," said Lambros, who worries about her 15-year-old daughter who takes a cab to Millennium High School each morning.

"I know she's focusing on getting a cab and getting to school," Lambros said. "Sometimes I don't think she's looking."