Social Distancing on the Kosciuszko

In the spirit of social distancing I decided to revisit a place where I could expect to find very few people, if any: The newly-opened Kosciuszko Bridge.

The new bridge includes a generously apportioned pedestrian and bike path, an amenity not present on the old bridge. I wrote about the new Kosciuszko in November, complaining that it lacked two fundamental amenities: An emergency telephone and even a single garbage can.

I am happy to report the MTA remedied this situation since last I visited. I found two solar-powered emergency call boxes on the bridge itself, and one near the base of the bridge on the Queens side. I might have found more of these devices on the bridge and on the Greenpoint side but I turned back about two-thirds of the way over the span.

Behold call box KBQ 5181, a style of callbox identical to those found on the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge.

The yellow cabinet contains a telephone handset which should connect to 911. I did not pick up the phone but it occurred to me much later that I probably should not have even opened this cabinet. Doing so might have set of an alarm at the nearest police precinct. I should have learned this some months ago from my experience in summoning the full force of the New York City Police Department when I repeatedly opened and closed the cabinet door on the suicide/crisis counseling phone on the RFK/Triborough Bridge.

But this is a different style of phone cabinet, so maybe simply opening the door does not trigger an alarm like the RFK phone did. I see now that to connect to 911 one must press a red button, possibly as a preëmptive way of preventing false alarms by simply opening the cabinet.

If it did set off an alarm somewhere, I do apologize.There is never a time for that kind of nonsense but the age of corona is more than ever no time to screw around with sending false alarms to law enforcement.

Also new since my last visit: A somewhat ludicrous quantity of trash cans, lined with bags and secured to the railing with chains and padlocks.

Their presence is welcome but why so many? There might have been two dozen of these things along a path with not enough foot traffic to fill even one of them. I don’t know how long they’ve been here but every single bin contained no trash.

But then maybe the question to ask is why other bridges in New York have so few trash cans. The Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge has, I believe, only one. The RFK/Triborough has zero.

Still notably absent from the bridge is people. I don’t think I saw more than 10 individuals up there yesterday. You could blame that on the stay-at-home order but I don’t think that accounts for it. If anything I would expect more people, cooped up at home with cabin fever, to take to a walkway like this. But the walkway has been consistently empty of people since opening, save for the first week or so.

I would blame this on the bridge’s relatively obscure location, and on how difficult and even dangerous access to the span is from either side.

Here is a GPS map showing my route which included the Kosciuszko, Old Calvary, Queens Boulevard, and other areas where I would not expect to come too close to other people. I call it “Distancing for the Distance”. 8.41 miles isn’t bad but I’ve gone much farther when anxiety a need to escape from myself made it seem like nothing else made sense.