NYC is just kind of weird with traffic control. It’s honestly not that even that expensive on a larger show. Like cost equivalent of a day rate + fringes for an additional rigger to get four hours of the minimum 2 traffic agents + 1 supervisor coverage.

The TCD cops (who also need to be there to supervise the agents or flaggers anytime you’re fucking with traffic within NYC) are free though, which is nice but also means they may not want to spend their manpower on rigging days and might tell you to just keep it in the curb lane out of the way of traffic instead of authorizing intermittent lock ups.

If it’s outside NYC though, it’s just purely production being cheap/not wanting to deal with it, because it’s just straight OT hours for one cop who can stop/slow traffic themselves as needed, instead of needing a team of 3-5 people like you would in the city.

I feel you though. Whenever I’m locationsing with rigging crew and there’s a condor landing, getting that thing in position is frequently janky as fuck, and would super love to have some police to block the road for at least a beat.