Ciao, Eric! Adams talks muni matters in Rome
ROME — This city wasn’t built in a day — but it also wasn’t constructed as slowly as New York’s subways.
Mayor Adams noted that Friday as he visited the “Eternal City” and marveled at how quickly its transit terminals were built — while lamenting that in the Big Apple things really take an eternity.
Hizzoner — who is in Rome to meet with Pope Francis this weekend — hailed a new metro station at Rome’s legendary Colosseum as a “real great idea” that was done in just a few years. “How many years did it take to build Second Avenue?” Adams asked, referring to the longstalled, $7.7 billion Second Avenue subway line.
“Normally, you build a subway system in New York, you remove dirt but here . . . it’s almost like a real historical dig,” Adams added.
Adams also alluded to all the red tape when it came to building in the Empire State. “When it comes down to making these major renovations, here they are able to build without all the bureaucracy.”
A video shared by Adams shows the mayor standing in the subway tunnel next to the historic amphitheater, wearing a hard hat and an orange construction vest.
“This is an amazing feat to see this built right by the Coliseum [sic]. It’s going to allow passengers and visitors and tourists to come take the metro right to the Coliseum,” he said in the footage, posted on X Friday.
“They use a tunnel boring machine. Not only does it bore the hole but as it bores the hole, it actually seals it,” he said.
Adams later met with Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, to discuss public transportation and housing.
Gualtieri later wrote on X that “#Rome and #NewYork” want to work together because both are global cities that share issues like mass transit, housing policies and climate change.
Adams traveled to Italy Thursday to meet with the pontiff in Vatican City on a trip funded by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, which was founded by Francis via papal decree in 2021.