Dear Friends,
Everyday I drive 12 long hours on the New York City roads. Almost all the roads and Avenues are in bad shape that within one hour of driving my whole body starts to pain. My back hurts and I even hit my head few times on the ceiling of the cab. Take for example Madison Ave, which starts from 23rd St. At around 34th St going uptown there are numerous numbers of digging by Con Ed and Telephone companies made the Ave totally undrivable yet we have to drive on that ave many times a day. This thing is going on God knows how long and it seems to me that there is no one to oversee this. I was talking to a driver about this in JFK airport Central Taxi Lot and one of the drivers told me that last December during one Sunday evening in the Holiday season he was driving a young lady who happens to be a tourist to uptown on Madison Ave to her Hotel. The lady was almost full term pregnant. The driver told me he was minding his own business when he came close to the worst part of Madison Ave which is around 50th St he heard a scream. He stopped his taxi and looked back, she was crying and told him to take her to the nearest Hospital as she saw blood coming out of her. The driver did not know what to do. She said that the jerking she felt because of the road condition made her bleeding. So the driver sped up and took her to the Lenox Hill Hospital Emergency room which was the closest hospital and stayed with the passenger until her husband showed up. He was very gracious and gave him a $100 tips for saving her. Now why did not we hear anything about it in the newspaper or in TV ? Remember they were foreigners and they had to go back the next day.

New York City’s roads are may be the WORST roads among all the big cities in this country. I would say even this far that it may be the WORST roads among all the big cities in the world. Everyday I see hundreds of different constructions in the city but I don’t just get it that how come after so much money spent, why does not the conditions of the roads improve?

The rule of any city is that if any company or dept. wants to dig the street, they have to deposit the amount money to DOT account it will need to re fix the road in it’s ORIGINALILY or their money will not be returned and the bill will not be paid.

Throughout the whole world this is how this works. But not in New York City…Every time I see all those patch up work on the street which are not properly done one question comes to my mind..How come this kind of patch works were approved by the DOT..? Is there anyone really responsible to check if the jobs were done properly or not..? I could show you thousands of patch works on the streets in New York City, none I repeat NONE was done properly. Some of them are raised (too much filler) or some of them are below the original (too little filler). If it was up to me, I would make sure I go there with all my equipments to measure minutely before I issue any payment or pay any bill.

So my friends this is what I meant by saying that NASA does not need to find any place to train it’s Astronauts. All they have to do is come to New York City with their Mars Rover or similar vehicle to train. They will be pleasantly surprised to see that the roads are very similar like the surface of the Moon or Mars with all the pot holes, very uneven and broken roads and all the speed bumps.

Shame on you DOT and shame on Janette Sadik-Khan, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. You don’t deserve this job. I could do this job BETTER than YOU. If it was up to me I would not have hired you in the first place. Or even if I had hired you I would have fired you looooooong before.