Car-Free Streets

A reader sends in these shots of weekend car-free street activity. Above, the crowd takes in a performance from the Fourth Arts Block "Meet the Street" series on East 4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue in Manhattan; below is a scene from the first Saturday of Williamsburg Walks, taken at North 6th and Bedford.

We've been meaning to post this vid from culture mag ANIMAL New York (h/t Gothamist), which neatly undercuts the argument that the newly pedestrianized Broadway is "only for tourists." Sure, the tourists are grateful not to be jostling for space right next to traffic anymore, but so are lots of people from the five boroughs. It is, after all, where 158,000 people go to work every day. Take that, Andrea Peyser.

After today's rain clears out, it looks to be a beautiful weekend for two Summer Streets events in Brooklyn.

I've lived in New York City for just about twenty years now but yesterday was my first trip to Times Square.

Here's the view from 45th Street looking south at about 1 pm today, about 30 minutes after the city Dept. of Transportation closed Broadway to motor vehicle traffic in Midtown. It's obviously way too soon to judge how this experiment is working but today, at least, car-free Broadway appears to be a huge hit. 

When Memorial Day weekend rolls around, here at Streetsblog we usually take the opportunity to note the advent of the summer driving season -- and all the waste and violence that entails. This year's going to be a little different, because we've got a major livable streets milestone to celebrate in New York City.

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today officially announced that work on new pedestrian spaces at Times and Herald Squares -- the "Green Light for Midtown" pilot program -- will enter a new phase this Sunday night, when auto traffic will be re-routed to Seventh Avenue. From the DOT press release: 

In addition to last summer's blockbuster car-free event, Summer Streets, three New York neighborhoods tried out pedestrian streets on a more intimate scale. Williamsburg Walks, Summer Space in Brooklyn Heights, and the 78th Street Play Street in Jackson Heights gave communities a taste of how streets function as public spaces when cars aren't clogging up the curb or barreling down the road. Get ready for more this year: About ten neighborhoods are applying to put on pedestrian streets in the summer.

There's no place quite like Times Square, and no exact precedent for the reclamation of street space along Broadway that Mayor Bloomberg and NYCDOT unveiled last week. But London's pedestrian improvements to Trafalgar Square certainly invite comparison. DianaD describes those changes in this week's StreetsWiki entry: