The city will replace two of four bustling lanes of traffic on Broadway in Midtown with a public esplanade, including a bike lane, pedestrian walkway, and space for café tables and greenery. The esplanade, dubbed “
“I’m envisioning it as a public park on the street,” Barbara Randall, the executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, told the New York Times. The FCBID is cooperating with the city’s Department of Transportation to design the boulevard.
The Times reports that the esplanade is part of Bloomberg’s master plan to reduce pollution and traffic congestion in NYC by encouraging cycling, walking, and alternatives to cars. The plan is also evidence of Bloomberg’s dedication to his vision for fewer cars and less congestion, after his bid for congestion-pricing was crushed in
The esplanade was designed with the help of renowned Danish designer Jan Gehl. Copehagen is known for its ped-friendliness worldwide.
Photo via flickr by Batbob.
Related posts:
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
well they have been running around Toronto for a quite a few years now and even though I am on a bike most of the time, they still make me smile. The roads would be a lot less crowded, safer for us on bikes (they are so narrow) and if people are going to drive, this is a lot better.
The thing I like about the Canadian models is that there’s a diesel option. If these little suckers could run on biodiesel here in the states, I’d feel a lot better about them…
i was biking around one day last summer, and was relaxing with my hands off the handlebars as I approached a red light when I received a few honks behind me. Back then I was still in the habit of responding to ornery motorists, and to my surprise it was a driver of a Prius yelling at me to “get off the road!” I think South Park had it right: Prius drivers don’t create smog, they create [i]smug![/i]
I’d like to challenge a couple of assumptions that run through this blog and many of the comments that followed it. The first is that a society that depended exclusively on a public transportation system would be a fundamentally more equitable one. Putting aside the likelihood of getting rid of all the personal cars (even the workers paradise couldn’t manage it) we are faced with a system that would be convenient for some and less so –how much less would depend on the efficiency and cost of the system–for others. Those with the most money would have the ability to buy a home, and arrange a job, so that they would spend a minimum amount of time in the system. Let’s be realistic, time driving or riding is a tax. And it is a tax levied increasingly on people who have little choice as to where they live and where they work. This is true today (note the impossibility of securing affordable housing anywhere near an urban center) and would still hold, to a greater or lesser extent, were a universal public transportation system in place.
The second assumption is that high-mileage cars would help solve our transportation problem. Even if all cars switched overnight to electricity we would see a substantial long term impact on our pollution problem, but our transportation problems would remain essentially unchanged. The congestion, the unequal commute “tax†described above, the danger, and enormous waste of space created by our present transportation infrastructure would continue.
This was not always the case. The fifties, sixties, and seventies, saw fewer cars on an essentially complete national highway system. Since almost everyone who needed a car could get one, and get around the city fairly quickly, it was a golden age. We all miss it.
Now we buy a Prius and send the message that there is a serious problem with the emissions the average car creates. That is a logical position. Others buy a Ford F-150 to send the message that public transportation and smaller cars will not solve the inequities growing in our car driven society. That point of view, often voiced by people that lack the resources to compete in either the real or ideal worlds described above, may be somewhat nihilistic, but it is not illogical.
We need another paradigm. What is it?
Comments, especially skeptical ones, encouraged. Please contact me at sila332@gmail.com
The argument isn’t entirely fleshed out, but I think the basic principle to point out is that 60% of the emissions associated with a car stem from its manufacture, and not actually driving it around. So for people who are driving relatively efficient vehicles, it’d be much nicer for the environment to drive them until they fall apart then to ‘upgrade’ to something that’s only marginally more efficient, since this will entail lots of nasty manufacturing. I’m glad to say this principle hasn’t stopped me from buying bikes – seven is a nice round number, don’t you think? And though I’ve been car-free for almost ten years, I would consider an all-electric or plugin hybrid, or possibly even a little diesel… I certainly agree that more tiny cars on the streets would make riding feel safer.