A Porsche, an ambulette, Paul Steely White, Bruce Schaller and a vendor compete for street space in Soho
Crowded shoppers and residents want more sidewalk space in Soho and they would be happy to give up some of the area's parking space to get it, according to a study released today by Transportation Alternatives (Download a PDF version here). Conducted by seemingly omnipresent transportation consultant Bruce Schaller, who issued a mammoth report on New York City traffic congestion for the Manhattan Institute last week, the study's results were based on interviews with 1,000 drivers and pedestrians along Prince Street.
"People perceive Soho's streets to be very crowded," Schaller said at a press conference held this morning in a prime parking spot that he was lucky enough to find right across the street from the Apple store on Prince and Green. "The sidewalk widths and design of these streets hasn't changed since this was a manufacturing area decades ago." Schaller's study makes the case that giving more street space to pedestrians would be "a win-win-win for Soho's visitors, residents and business owners."
The study found that:
89% of the people who use Prince Street are arriving by subway, bus, walking or bicycle. Only 9% arrive by car.
By a ratio of 5:1 shoppers said they would come to Prince Street more often if they had more space to walk, even if it meant eliminating parking spaces. Interestingly, this ratio was nearly identical for visitors and those who live and work in the area.
Most shoppers would rather see space taken away from parked cars rather than street vendors.
And this surprising, interesting result: The shoppers who value wider sidewalks over parking spent about five times as much money, in aggregate, as those who value parking over sidewalks. Or, as White puts it, "The people who are willing to forgo parking for sidewalks are the big spenders."
Schaller's report concludes, "The major implication of the study is that Prince Street would be improved for visitors, residents and workers through an expansion of the space allocated to pedestrians."
White says T.A. has no specific street design or street closing recommendations at this time. "That has to come out of a consensus-building process with community stakeholders." Nevertheless, he offered a few ideas of what might emerge from such a process: "You might consider eliminating parking on one side of the street and super-sizing one of the sidewalks or making Prince Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue a pedestrians-only zone on a Saturday, perhaps even during next year's holiday season," he said. A similar pedestrianization project was just done on a pair of major shopping streets in London two weeks ago, with reports of great results.
Charles Hughes, a street vendor whose table of books and screenplays stood adjacent to the morning press conference, wasn't buying any of it. "This is just an indirect way to get rid of street vendors and make the place look like Beverley Hills," he said. "They just want to make New York City even more bland."
AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.
ALBANY — “They are putting every barrier in our way to not have to face us directly and look us in the eye and then make an unconscionable decision. This is Albany at its worst,” said Amy Cohen.