LIers flock to Giants Super Bowl parade

 Giants fans stand along Broadway waiting for the start of the the Super Bowl victory parade.

It's standing room only Tuesday on the 6:54 a.m. express train fromHicksville to Manhattan, where throngs of Giants fans will cheer the Super Bowl champs in the Canyon of Heroes.

A group of six including Billy Farley from Bethpage acknowledged they were supposed to be in school but this is a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Besides, he said, "We're seniors."

Their plan: "Follow Eli Manning jerseys" to the parade grounds.

If you have a problem with large, high-decibel crowds, stay away from lower Manhattan.

Everybody else can join the expected 1 million Giants fans who will pack Broadway for a delirious ticker-tape salute to the team that battled its way to its second Super Bowl championship in five seasons.

Kicking off at 11 a.m. at Battery Place and Washington Street, the parade will motor its way north just short of a mile up the Canyon of Heroes through a blizzard of "ticker tape" -- actually confetti, shredded waste paper, fresh toilet rolls and anything else that floats through the air -- for a 1 p.m. ceremony at City Hall Plaza.

"Heartwarming doesn't quite cover this, what you go through and what your feelings are," said Giants coach Tom Coughlin, who was in the 2008 parade. "When you are looking down the side streets, and there's people forever down those side streets, and they're all there because they are taking ownership of their team."

Later, the Giants will travel to New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christieis expected to hold a rally for fans.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will present the Giants keys to the city -- as he did with the Yankees in 2009 when they won the World Series. Bloomberg, who traveled to Indianapolis for the game, already is counting the dollar signs for the city's economy.

"The Giants' Super Bowl victory was an incredible win for our city," Bloomberg said Monday, projecting that the parade will boost the city's economy by $19 million to $38 million, depending on how many fans show up. Costs of the parade will be offset by official sponsors such as Duane Reade, Hackensack University Medical Center and Toyota, the mayor said.

Crowd estimates for ticker-tape parades are not always exact and the police don't release figures. But city officials expect that between 500,000 and 1 million people will come into town for the Giants event. By Monday morning, 49,483 people had entered a sweepstakes for 500 tickets to attend the City Hall event.

Usual security measures typical of large events such as the New Year's Eve celebration at Times Square will be in place, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. While there is no specific terrorism threat against the city, he said police will have a counterterrorism presence on the streets and expect to use special two-story movable Skywatch towers to view the crowd.

The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North will provide extra service, as will the Port Authority with PATH trains. Broadway and many surrounding streets will be closed to vehicles, and subway stations at Fulton Street, Wall Street and City Hall also might be shut at times.

Traffic through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel will be impacted, with the exit at Trinity Place shut from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Sanitation crews will begin cleaning up immediately. The last time the Giants had a parade, in February 2008, about 36.5 tons of debris was swept up. In 2000, a parade for the Yankees dumped 46.7 tons.

With William Murphy, Igor Kossov, Maria Alvarez, Matthew Chayes, Kery Murakami and Mark Harrington

Source:http://www.newsday.com/sports/football/super-bowl/liers-flock-to-giants-super-bowl-parade-1.3510411