Bring this idea to Ocean ave. City to Experiment With Car-Free Streets

City to Experiment With Car-Free Streets
By Fernanda Santos


The musician David Byrne, left, joined Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the bicyclist Lance Armstrong and the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, on Monday for the announcement of “Summer Streets.” (Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)Emulating similar experiments in Paris, London, and Bogotá, Colombia, New York City will close off to traffic a 6.9-mile route from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street on three consecutive Saturdays, giving New Yorkers to a chance to explore and enjoy “car-free recreation corridors” — well, for six hours a stretch, at least.

In making the announcement, the mayor summoned some star power: the cyclist and seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and the musician David Byrne of the Talking Heads, who said he commutes by bicycle daily to his work in SoHo from his home in Midtown.
The route will run from Lower Manhattan to East 72nd Street via Centre Street, Lafayette Street, Fourth Avenue and Park Avenue. Major crosstown routes — including Chambers, Canal, East Houston, 14th, 23rd and 59th Streets — will remain open to traffic. Buses that ride along the 6.9-mile route will be rerouted during the street closings — which have been scheduled for Aug. 9, 16, and 23, from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m.
Standing on a wide stretch of sidewalk outside the uptown entrance to the No. 6 train station on Astor Place, the mayor said of the program: “There might be some minor disruptions here and there, but I think that those will be far outweighed by the huge benefits that Summer Streets will bring to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”
He added: “In the end, Summer Streets is an experiment. If it works, we’ll certainly consider doing it again. If not, we won’t. But we have never been afraid to try new ideas, especially the ones that have the potential to improve our quality of life.”
Ms. Sadik-Khan said, “We’re really committed to treating our 6,000 miles of streets as more than just travel corridors, but as really vital public places. For many of us, our streets are really our front yards and this new initiative will allow us to enjoy them free of vehicles.”
It was after consultations with the New York Police Department that city officials settled on the 6.9-mile route that stretches from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, slicing along the heart of eastern Manhattan on Park Avenue as the least disruptive for the event. The mayor said that traffic on Park Avenue is lighter on Saturdays than it is on Sundays.
The city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, said: “We’ve been making very careful preparations on our traffic front to make sure that we’re dealing with the access issues that residents have, with the delivery issues that businesses have and also to make sure that we’ve got appropriate access for emergency vehicles.”
Ms. Sadik-Khan mentioned similar initiatives in Paris, London and Bogotá, where one of the city’s main streets, Carrera Séptima, is closed for traffic on Sundays year-round and about 1.5 million people come out to walk, ride their bicycle, jog or skate along the route. In New York, Crunch Gym instructors will offer free aerobics class and the city is working with other private partners to develop a bicycle-sharing program.
Mayor Bloomberg said that he does not plan to ride his bike along Park Avenue, “but I’ll certainly walk.” “I just think it would be a media circus and I’d pretty likely run down somebody, so I’d better not.”
“Look, there will be minor inconveniences,” the mayor said about potential disruptions for business owners and residents along Park Avenue. “There’s minor inconveniences when it rains, when you have snow; inconveniences when it’s hot, when it’s cold; inconveniences when there are people on the streets, when they’re not.”
“Think about the smoking ban,” he added. “Everybody was so afraid of it, but today I don’t know if you’d find very many bar and restaurant owners or people who work in bars and restaurants that would go back.”
“You’ve got to try new things,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “It’s three Saturdays. If it does hurt and it doesn’t provide any benefits, we won’t do it anymore. If it turns out that it’s great, we’ll do it a lot more, I hope. But there’s only one way to find out and that’s to go and to try new things and to minimize the disruption.”
According to the mayor’s office, several cities have adopted similar temporary car-free corridors, including El Paso, Tex., and Cambridge, Mass. Portland and Chicago are said to be planning similar initiatives.