Monday Commute in New York: The Marathon Streets Are Giving the City Back
By Sunday evening the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is open again, the mid-course bridges reopened around 6:30 p.m., and only the finish-area streets run late, to 10:30 p.m. Monday morning's commute inherits a normal city — barriers stacked, course gone.
The biggest traffic story in New York on Sunday was a road network that disappeared at dawn. By Sunday evening it is coming back in the order the race left it: the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, closed to non-emergency traffic from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. with its upper level shut since 11 p.m. Saturday, reopened at approximately 4 p.m., and the Staten Island exits at Bay Street and Lily Pond Avenue reopened with it, the MTA says.
Through Brooklyn and Queens the reopenings rolled with the runners: streets began reopening around 1:15 p.m. as the course cleared, the Queensboro crossing's truck restriction ran to 5:30 p.m., and the Pulaski, Willis Avenue and Madison Avenue bridges — the Bronx in-and-out of the course — reopened around 6:30 p.m. The Central Park transverses at 65th, 79th and 96th Streets ran to about 9:30 p.m.
What remains closed latest is the finish itself: stretches of First Avenue and Central Park West run to 10:30 p.m., under the standing rule that a street reopens when the NYPD says so, after the last runners and the cleanup crews have passed. Drivers near the finish on Sunday night should still expect the detours they have had all day.
For Monday, the message is the reset: no marathon closure carries into the work week on any source this desk read, alternate side parking is back in its normal Monday effect, and the only marathon artifact on the commute will be the barriers stacked on the sidewalks — and a great many sore legs on the subway.
