If Mayor Eric Adams isn’t onboard with the new borough jail slated for Chinatown, he should scrap Bill de Blasio’s plan entirely and build a new, modern facility on Rikers instead.

Rookie Lower East Side City Councilman Christopher Marte says he misspoke when he told an appreciative audience that he’d talked Mayor Adams out of the jail tower slated for Chinatown. At the least, his “mistake” points to how much the community hates the idea. But that’s true of all four neighborhoods targeted for new jails under the “close Rikers” plan.

The project already is dead in the water. It was “fast-tracked” at $8.2 billion last year, but would cost far more now that inflation is raging, and can only detain 3,544 inmates — far short of the current jail population or even the all-time low of 4,702 set during the pandemic.

At least put this disaster-in-waiting on hold, Mr. Mayor, and look at building modern facilities to hold at least 5,000 on Rikers Island — which can surely be finished long before de Blasio’s fantasy jails. (Complaints about how hard it is to visit the island and so on can be fixed a lot more easily than shoehorning jails into busy residential ‘hoods.)

Facing reality is the best thing to do for the neighborhoods now under threat, for the city as a whole and for those New Yorkers who truly have to be jailed somewhere.