Friday Video: A Vision for West 72nd Street

What do we want? Livable streets! Where do we want it? On the Upper West Side!

Our friends at Streetfilms are back this week with a very simple video showing the benefits of transforming West 72nd Street from a sclerotic, dangerous and inefficient car-centric street into a people-first boulevard that connects Central and Riverside parks.

The vision comes from Streetopia Upper West Side (full disclosure: a sister organization of Streetsblog) and includes the kind of core ideas that everyone should want for any badly designed New York City street. These include:

• Limiting through-traffic to give priority to buses, which carry tens of thousands of people. 
• Explicitly connecting the parks for cyclists with a world-class, high-comfort, all-ages-and-abilities cycle track.
• Expanding sidewalks and shortening crossing distances at every intersection to invite pedestrians to stroll, shop and meet their neighbors in a low-streets environment.
• Adding mid-block crosswalks on every block.
• Repurposing the curb lane to serve multiple uses in proportion to needs.
• Planting a lot of trees.

And then maybe someday soon, a roadway that devotes 88 percent of its space to a tiny minority of users (drivers) could finally work for everyone. Check it out: