New York Today: Global Summit, Local Gridlock

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times An unusual degree of diplomacy will be called for on the city’s roadways this week.

As the United Nations General Assembly convenes here this week, tempers will flare. Progress will be slow. As the hours drag on, hopelessness may set in.

We speak here of the traffic.

The cursing will start this morning, when the F.D.R. Drive is closed for President Obama’s arrival and motorcade.

Things will probably get worse from there.

In fact, escalating international tensions this year mean more meetings involving world leaders attending the General Assembly.

Which means more traffic.

“Almost every day is going to be a traffic adventure,” said Samuel I. Schwartz, the former city traffic commissioner better known as Gridlock Sam.

Security will be extra heavy around Middle Eastern heads of state, he said.

Demonstrations will pop up near not just near the United Nations, but at consulates and maybe Times Square.

Mr. Obama will keep the street-closers busy, as he shuttles from the Waldorf-Astoria to the Hilton to the United Nations.

Everywhere the president goes until his departure Tuesday night, streets will be frozen â€" not just for motor vehicles, but for pedestrians.

The spillover could tie up the West Side Highway, Lower Manhattan, and even western Queens, all week long.

Here’s what else you need to know for Monday.

WEATHER

Again with the sunshine. Breezy, with a high of 68 and a skip in your step. Skies should stay clear for most of the week.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: O.K. so far. Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: No major delays. Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

COMING UP TODAY

- Joseph J. Lhota, the Republican mayoral candidate, meets with the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Midtown and attends the Brownstone Republican Club meeting in Brooklyn.

- Bill de Blasio is on Curtis Sliwa’s radio show on AM 970 The Answer at 8:15 a.m.

- The teenaged Pakistani advocate for girls’ education who was shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai, speaks at a United Nations news conference on the effort to educate Syrian refugee children.

- Officials break ground on two flood-resistant train tunnels under the Hudson River. The project could cost $14.5 billion.

- A 4 p.m. rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza outside the U.N. against labor trafficking and slavery.

- Five Americans who received Nobel Prizes last year will have their names unveiled on the nation’s only Nobel monument, at Theodore Roosevelt Park on the Upper West Side. [Free, 5:30 p.m.]

- Advertising Week is here! Lots of panel talks with titles like “Absolut Vodka Transforms to Re-Engage With Millennials.”

- Cher sings in Rockefeller Plaza on the “Today” show. [Free, 8 a.m.]

- Richard Dawkins, the biologist and crusading atheist, discusses his new memoir at Brooklyn Academy of Music. [$40 includes price of book, 7:30 p.m.]

- For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- The bike lane up Avenue of the Americas ends abruptly at 42nd Street, so vigilante cycling advocates painted their own extension of it Saturday night. [New York Times]

- A quarter of Democrats who voted for Christine C. Quinn plan to vote for Mr. Lhota in November. [Crain's Insider]

- A young Mr. de Blasio’s 1988 humanitarian trip to Nicaragua sparked visions of an unfettered leftist government. [New York Times]

- Cardinal Dolan of New York praised the pope’s recent comments chastising church guardians for being “obsessed” with sexual morality. [New York Times]

- A Sikh professor at Columbia University who has called for greater bias-crime protection for Sikhs was attacked and beaten by a mob on 110th Street who appeared to believe he was Muslim. [New York Post]

- A dance-music concert at an amusement park in Connecticut was shut down after several people collapsed from overdoses of a drug called 2CP. [Hartford Courant]

- Brooklyn Botanic Garden is on the defensive after an outcry over its decision to suspend its scientific research program. [New York Times]

- The Yankees did not win. They fell to the Giants, 2-1. The Mets beat the Phillies, 4-3.

- The football Giants were shut out by the Panthers, 38-0. The Jets beat the Bills, 27-20.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.

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