The Second Avenue subway will have a daily impact on hundreds of thousands of commuters — save for at least one distinguished Upper East Side resident.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that he will not be incorporating the new subway extension into his daily commute, even though the 96th Street station is located less than a mile away from his Gracie Mansion residence.
Instead, the mayor will be sticking with his ride in a New York Police Department sport utility vehicle. That’s at least in part because the mayor’s morning routine involves a roundabout trip to his preferred Brooklyn gym, a ritual from his brownstone days. Taking the train there would be too inconvenient, he said at an unrelated news conference.
“Think about the route to Brooklyn and then to City Hall,” de Blasio told reporters. “So I’m going to continue doing exactly what I’m doing: going to my home neighborhood in the morning and then going to City Hall from there.”
De Blasio could theoretically take the Q train to transfer to either the F or R trains, which both feature stops close to the gym. An R train back to Manhattan would carry him right back to City Hall.
“But I take the subway regularly as opportunities come up where it makes a lot more sense to take the subway,” the mayor noted. “I like taking the subway, I have throughout my life so I keep doing that.”
He added that the last time he made the subway trip from Brooklyn to City Hall was “maybe three weeks ago, something like that.”
