I'm really glad I don't have to drive in the city. Every morning, I walk past a block stretch that is usually pretty busy, and as such they have a number of traffic cops in the area. The major intersection is right at Bowling Green, where Broadway feeds into Battery Place, the road that connects exit 1 of the FDR to West St (and that I eventually live on).
The woman who's been at this intersection for a few months now really amazes me. I wonder if they get any training for this stuff. There doesn't seem to be any method to her madness. Basically, if there's a car waiting to go in a particular direction, she waves them on - completely ignoring the fact that there is nowhere for the car to go. So the car, of course, sits in the middle of the intersection, denying any other cars from going in a direction where there is room_._
In the meantime, she also neglects all pedestrians. The pedestrians, realizing this, ignore all street signs and markings, and make their own path across the sea of cars. So now you have cars that are bumper to bumper, people walking in between them, and other cars go anywhere because of the gridlock caused by the first two.
I swear, her presence alone creates chaos. She basically does exactly the opposite of whatever the lights are telling everyone else to do. You would think that the lights have some pretty sophisticated scheduling algorithms or something (I'm going to do some googling to see if that's true). What purpose does she serve??
Maybe someone needs to teach her about scheduling (or at least some common sense).
When I walk by, sometimes I'm inclined to start directing traffic myself. I can't be any worse.