You have to applaud the new leadership in DOT and the Mayor that keep on trying new things to a city where new improvements normally take DECADES to take root.  Within a year or two, they have already transformed part of Broadway from 35th to 42nd Street into a nice resting area for office workers and tourists, Meatpacking District and Madison Square Park area both transformed from intersections that no pedestrians know how to cross without getting hit to plazas and open space.  Now they are tackling the biggest congestion headache of all – Times Square and Herald Square!

Any New Yorker would avoid Times Square and Herald Square/Macy’s whenever it’s possible because we all know it’s always pack with people and the sidewalks are not big enough to accommodate the amount of pedestrians.  Cars can’t get through either not only because of all the congestion, but also because pedestrians are spilling off to the streets.  It’s ridiculous and everybody knows it, and yet no one seems to do anything about it year after year.  Finally a plan that is big and bold enough that might actually take care of the problem once and for all! Starting Memorial Day weekend, Broadway between 42nd to 47th and 33rd to 35th will become pedestrians only, closing off from cars.  Now they are doing this with convincing reasons, Broadway cut across the entire Manhattan slight diagonally.  It pre-dated the perfectly layout street grid of 1812, and whenever it intersect with an avenue and a street, it create this traffic headache and heavy congestion – namely Times Square and Herald Square.  By removing those part of Broadway from traffic, the complex intersections become normal intersections, the traffic that’s going up and down the avenues and through the streets will have more green signal time, and the pedestrians get more space as an added result.  I am not going to repeat the many other reasons they gave, you can watch the slideshow below.  But this is exciting news! Finally, New York will have large open space in the most crowded part of the city just like London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and countless other cities in the world.

Related posts:

1. Streets of Hong Kong
2. Street Transformer
3. In support of PlaNYC
4. Williamsburg Walks
5. Pillow Fight

Tagged: Herald Square · New York · Times Square · Urban planning