maxtm

I finally got a chance to walk Car-Free Broadway, a six-month pilot closure of Broadway through Midtown, over the weekend, and it’s really just… wonderful.

Any New Yorker knows that Broadway between, say, 47th and 30th Street or so is an absolute nightmare. Narrow sidewalks + 8 bajillion slow-moving awe-struck tourists = YOU WILL NEVER GET TO YOUR DESTINATION. Now, the street has been given back to the people, and there’s plenty of room to move about. And it’s actually… relaxing. I no longer hate walking through Times Square.

What about the cars? I have to drive in NYC sometimes for work, so I’m not wholly unsympathetic to drivers—but I do believe that cities, for the sake of sustainability, productivity, health, and quality of life should not be designed for cars, but centered around transit, walking, and biking—accommodating and tolerating other vehicles only as necessary. (Interesting read: A suburb in Germany, Vauburn, has taken this idea to its most extreme logical conclusion and allowed cars only in lots on the outskirts of the town center.)

Take a look at this comparison picture of how much space cars take up to transport the same number of people on foot, in a bus, or on bikes:

The truth is, the vast majority of traffic through Midtown (and much of Manhattan) is by pedestrians, not cars. DOT has also argued that closing Broadway improves traffic flow on the 7th and 6th Avenues by eliminating the complicated intersections that act as bottlenecks at Times Square and Herald Square. Either way, things seem to be going pretty smoothly so far, with some quibbles from deliverymen and tour bus companies.

Pedestrian plazas do not fare as well in areas with poor transit, poor economies, or poor walkability, which is why they get poo-pooed by people who have seen them fail in cities before. Generally American cities in need of revitalization will close down some random street and declare it a pedestrian plaza, and fail to understand why no businesses thrive there and why no people want to walk there. It requires a larger culture shift—New York streets are already bursting with pedestrians and transit riders, so car-free Times Square just makes it more pleasant to stick around for a while. Until you get people out of their cars, they have no reason to take a stroll down a plaza in the first place.

I plopped down on one of the gaudy lawn chairs that the DOT has put out temporarily, until construction finishes. Sitting in the middle of the street in Times Square is quite an experience. You get to see the buildings around you in a whole new way. Before, I’d pause in the middle of the crosswalk to take a photo of the buildings or experience the lights around me. Now you can stand, or sit, as long as you want.

See this great interview with NYC DOT’s quite visionary Janette Sadik-Khan about returning public space to people.