And even enthusiasts see a downside to the dranny. “It’s kind of invasive!” Barbara S. said. “People know my car and driver. I’ve had friends say, ‘So, what did you buy at Hermes?’ But at the same time, it’s priceless to know who’s home and who’s not. I once called someone, and the housekeeper said she was not home. But I saw her driver in front of her building, so I knew she was screening her calls.”
Still, many less privileged parents admitted that “it would be nice” to have a driver, especially on a rainy day at pickup time, when the buses are packed and trying to find a cab is like waiting for Godot. Such moments of urban helplessness can ignite the temper of even the most well-adjusted mother, particularly when she sees other families being whisked into the comfort of a plush SUV.
One such mom, whom we’ll call Tracey E., recounted the day she was shlepping up the street in the pouring rain, with her youngest of her three children in a Maclaren stroller and her oldest one walking. Suddenly she saw a chauffeured black Mercedes wagon drive by. The window slid down and Tracey glimpsed her middle daughter, who was on a play date, gleefully calling, “Bye, Mommy!”
“What did I do wrong?” Tracey thought to herself.
Son ‘Loves’ the Durango
Frustrated, some mothers are electing to slide behind the wheel themselves, just as if they lived in Scarsdale or Greenwich.
Crystal Sikora, a classical singer and mother of a 7-year-old son, lives uptown but chauffeurs her son, who had an unspecified traumatic experience on the school bus, to and from his downtown private school in her black Dodge Durango. “I spend four hours a day in the car,” she said. “My son loves it because I have a DVD player and we spend quiet time in the car together. I like control of my nice, clean car.”
Audrey Silver Levin, a professional singer, native New Yorker and mother of a middle-school son in private school, tootles around the city all the time in her tan Acura MDX. “We live a little over a mile from school,” Ms. Levin said. “When my son has basketball practice and gets out at 5:30 p.m., he just hops in.” It’s “easier” and “more reliable” than getting a taxi, she said.
Whether it’s “Juan” or mom navigating these chariots through city streets, congestion has become a significant problem.
“Madison Avenue is a nightmare at pickup time,” Ms. Goldman said. “And it’s not just buses or the fact that they’re shooting Gossip Girl.”
“We are constantly fielding complaints about black cars violating traffic rules,” said Councilman Daniel R.
Garodnick of District 4, which includes the Upper East Side. “Residents have seen a proliferation of these cars.”
Ned Pinger, chief administrative officer at the Dalton School, said that in the past five years there have been more drivers at drop-off and pickup times, though he attributed this to the geographical diversity of the student body as well as the economic boom. Double-parking has become so problematic that the school recently sent a memo to families asking that they be respectful if they drive to school and don’t linger. “We have security just to help out with the traffic,” he said.
One Upper East Side school administrator, who asked not to be named, said that the neighbors complain all the time, so “we’ve asked the police to ticket the cars to alleviate the double-parking.” He noted, however, that the police are sometimes reluctant to ticket these cars because of the prominent families who own them.
“We target schools and work with the police department in handing out tickets,” said Edward Timbers, a spokesperson at the Department of Transportation “We put in ‘no parking’ rules around many schools.”
Indeed, many mothers said that getting parking tickets is part of the cost of driving your car around Manhattan. “Bloomberg’s ticket marathon is out of control,” said Barbara S. Ms. Zarin also said her family gets about two to three citations per month, even if Juan is sitting in the car. “You have to add that to your costs,” she said.
And what about the gigantic carbon footprint of these behemoths? “An idling SUV is very bad for the environment,” Mr. Garodnick said. “We want to encourage people to get out of their cars and into mass transit, for the sake of the environment and congestion.”
Allyson Shapiro, Ms. Zarin’s 10th-grader, is one of the sheltered kids finally allowed to explore the glory of mass transit. “This year I started taking the train,” she said, and marveled: “It was so fast!”
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