The Times staked out Mayor Bloomberg for five weeks to check on his commuting habits. The result of the investigation is pretty funny:
But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s commute is not your average straphanger’s ride.
On mornings that he takes the subway from home, Mr. Bloomberg is picked up at his Upper East Side town house by a pair of king-size Chevrolet Suburbans. The mayor is driven 22 blocks to the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he can board an express train to City Hall. His drivers zip past his neighborhood station, a local subway stop a five-minute walk away.
That means Mr. Bloomberg — whose much-discussed subway rides have become an indelible component of his public image — spends a quarter of his ostensibly subterranean commute in an S.U.V.
“I never see him,” said Namela Hossou, who sells newspapers every morning at the downtown entrance to the mayor’s nearest stop, at 77th Street, four blocks from the mayor’s house. “Never, never.”
Here’s the best part…the Mayor’s office blames the media:
Mr. Loeser said the mayor “walked to the subway when he first started as mayor, and he stopped doing it when cameras staked out his house every morning and walked with him.”
Informed that reporters never noticed any photographers milling outside of the mayor’s town house over the past five weeks, Mr. Loeser replied, “So you’re saying the solution worked.”