"It’s just a matter of time"

Peter Nash, 65, a neuroscientist who lives on the Upper West Side, said he had been expecting another terror attack in New York since 9/11. He said he had taken precautions like renting a safe deposit box outside the city for important papers, keeping an emergency pack (flashlight, duct tape, plastic bags, canned foods) in his apartment, and arranging rendezvous points with friends.

“It’s just a matter of time,” he said. “It’s the nature of terrorist organizations that they don’t do creative things and worthwhile things; they destroy. The only thing that surprises me is they haven’t been more successful.”

Robert W. Gottlieb, 68, a lawyer who was smoking a cigar near the Conservatory Water model boat pond in Central Park, said the risk of terror was “just something that we live with.”

On 9/11, he said, “they focused on New York, but in reality, terrorists could walk into department stores all over this country and blow them up.”

Whoever left the bomb in Times Square picked a spot that is already assumed to be a target and where it was likely someone would spot it, Mr. Gottlieb said.

He said the driver of the Nissan simply could have parked it at a meter on Madison Avenue “and I don’t know who would be left.”