Three days after Hurricane Sandy pounded New York City, traffic was starting to flow again over the bridges, but with a catch: Beginning Thursday, cars would only be allowed to cross into Manhattan if they had three or more people. That came as a surprise to many residents of Brooklyn and Long Island seeking to escape the outer boroughs. But soon, informal car pools had sprung up, with drivers picking up pedestrians at at the bridge entrance in order to meet the quota. “The same thing happened during 9/11,” one police officer on the scene told me.
UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg will lift the three-person minimum restriction on cars entering Manhattan starting at 5:00 p.m. today.
Correction: Officer Schwartz’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this video.