Yes, Daddy, It’s Positively Miserable And You Care Not A Whit!

If he’s done nothing else in office, Bloomberg has mastered the New York City Mayor-ism “Come on, it’s not so bad!” (Giuliani was good at it, too; done properly, the brushoff’s cadence drops down at “on” and crescendoes on the upside again with an annoyed, almost whiny “bad”). This after we find out that he goes to work around 7 a.m., long before anyone else is on the train:

Two days after transit officials announced that some subway lines are operating beyond 100 percent of capacity at peak hours, Mayor Bloomberg questioned the figures and said his own commute isn’t “that crowded.”

“I take the Lex line most days and it’s not that crowded,” the MetroCard-carrying mayor told several hundred people at a Crain’s New York Business breakfast forum in Midtown.

“So you stand next to people. Get real. This is New York. What’s wrong with that?” added Bloomberg.

Two of the lines that the mayor uses to get from his townhouse on East 79th Street to City Hall, the Nos. 4 and 6, were listed at 103 percent of capacity. The third line, the No. 5, came in at 102 percent.

That makes them the most packed in the system, along with the L line.

. . .

Aides said the mayor usually hops on the subway between 7 and 7:30 a.m. That might explain why he doesn’t experience the most intense crowding conditions. Transit surveys show that the passenger load is at its heaviest between 8 and 9 a.m.

A study from 2002 provided by the Straphangers Campaign found 19,348 passengers were carried from 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, one of the stops the mayor sometimes uses, between 7 and 8 a.m. The number swelled to 28,479 between 8 and 9 a.m.

(Actually they’re missing the best part of the Crain’s breakfast, which came when Hizzoner suggested — and didn’t sound like he was joking either — that Robert Caro should write his next great tome about Daniel Doctoroff . . . what masterbuilders these guys are!)