A Big Apple Siren Song

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg frequently rides the subway from his Manhattan townhouse to City Hall. One of his deputy mayors, however, recently felt the need to speed her morning commute in a chauffeur-driven car with lights flashing.

Hundreds of city-owned cars, Bloomberg since has learned, are equipped with the special police package -- siren included. Now, he wants to remove temptation.

Regulations call for the lights and sirens to be used only when traveling to emergencies. But last week, a local television station filmed a vehicle carrying Carol Robles-Roman, New York’s deputy mayor for legal affairs, driving along the shoulder of a highway. The same thing happened the next day, with Robles-Roman sitting in the back seat on her way to work as the car, emergency lights activated, moved quickly through a tollbooth.

Prompted by the incident, Bloomberg obtained a list of officials whose cars have had the special equipment installed. Exempting Police and Fire Department vehicles, the number was 300.

In fact, the mayor found that almost every elected official in New York and hundreds of city workers -- even people who repair computers -- have the lights and sirens on their cars.

“There are people on the list I’ve seen where it’s hard to understand why they have to rush to get someplace in order to pass some piece of legislation or file a piece of paper,” Bloomberg said in a reference to some members of the City Council.

The lights and sirens, he said, “are there for an emergency, and they only should be used in an emergency.”

To some extent, driving with flashing lights and sirens is a matter of mayoral style in New York.

When he moved about the city and traveled to and from his office, then-Mayor David N. Dinkins had his chauffeur turn on the special police package.

His successor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, preferred quieter trips as he toured the city in a station wagon nicknamed by reporters the “Rudymobile.”

Bloomberg uses sport utility vehicles, and definitely is not a lights-and-sirens mayor. At the start of his administration, he wrote a letter to staffers, cautioning them to travel low-key, except during crises.

While Robles-Roman did not heed the mayor’s original instructions, she now has ordered the lights and siren removed from her car.

Bloomberg said he soon will order some other officials to do the same.