Jessica Alfieri
writes everything you see here.
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Car[e]-Free Streets
Summer Streets is Bloomberg’s plan to make us all gooshy in love with him, and forget how overcrowded and broken our beautiful city is. And although I was skeptical at first, it mostly worked.
(I heart you, Mike!)
It was surreal to wake up on a Saturday morning without the honking of horns, the roaring of engines, and the ker-chinking of heavily laden chasses. Taken with the fact that construction at the park halts on the weekend, you might think I’m going to say I spent the morning in bed.
But I wanted to see an I Am Legend-like New York.
Which I could have, if it weren’t for all those other people who also wanted to see it.
(Those don’t look like mannequins.)
Eric and I left the house at 8:30 and found a brisk morning for August, bright and sunny, perfect for this car-free experiment. It was as if Bloomberg talked the heat and humidity into quitting along with the traffic. Talk about friends in high places.
At first, it was lovely out there.
We strolled up Park Avenue with similarly minded pedestrians: eager to enjoy, but also to keep to ourselves and keep the flow going.
Cyclists came out, runners came out, strollers came out; even road-skiers and a single Segway-er came out.
(That’s him over there on the left.)
It was fascinating to watch foot traffic that wasn’t confined to the sidewalks.
When humans have enough space, we let common sense rule. Walkers stayed to the left and right, allowing runners and cyclists the middle space for speed. A natural hierarchy took effect. And when people needed to change lanes, just as they’d learned in driver’s ed, they looked over their shoulders before moving.
The sidewalk highway is bad in New York because it’s so crowded that the rules go out the window. People weave across lanes in a way that would get you a DUI arrest in a car. Too rarely do people peek over their shoulder to make sure they’re not cutting somebody off.
And then there are tourists: stopped traffic, confused reverses, and sudden turns, which, to be honest, accounts for much of why the sidewalks can be such nightmares in the first place.
Meanwhile, just below Park Avenue on 42nd street, it was business as usual:
As lovely as the car-free street experiment was, by 11:00 the crowds were too annoying to stand, reminding us of the cold, hard fact: we’re over capacity. Even something as nice as having the entire two-way avenue to ourselves turned mob-like when everybody remembered to show up. Eventually it felt more like a road race than an afternoon walk.
Still, I’d never before had the chance to look any higher than the yellow warning signs inside the Grand Central tunnels. And it’s actually beautiful in there, or, it would be, if cars didn’t plow through it every day.
Go see for yourself. The experiment continues for the next two weeks: Saturdays, August 16 and 23, 7:00 am - 1:00 pm.
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