On Monday, a coalition of over 80 advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations challenged the next mayor, borough presidents and city council members to commit to reallocating 25 percent of street space from cars to pedestrians by 2025.
The coalition is called Transportation Alternatives, and the 5-part challenge they’re issuing is called “NYC 25×25.” It consists of the following 5 components:
- Recognize that the use of New York City’s streets is fundamentally inequitable;
- Envision a more just and resilient approach to street management;
- Agree to work with neighborhoods to create new public spaces that meet community needs;
- Speed our economic recovery by ensuring that our streets work for residents and businesses; and
- Reallocate 25 percent of car space to better use by 2025.
The Coalition website states that “By meeting this challenge, New York City’s next leaders will take a bold first step to correct a historic inequality. In a moment of overlapping crises — health, social, economic, environmental — the question for our city’s future leaders is not whether we can be bold enough to shift course, but whether we can afford not to. Our finite public spaces must benefit the many, not the few. The future of New York City depends on it.”
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“This is a watershed moment for New York City,” Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, told Gothamist/WNYC. “We need to look at this intersection of COVID, of racial injustice, economic inequities, and ask some serious questions about the future of our city and our budget and we need a new crop of leaders who are willing to look at streets as an asset, instead of a liability.”
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In the Transportation Alternatives report, repurposing 25 percent of car space could create 13 Central Parks or 12 Flushing Meadows, Corona or Flushing Meadow Parks. Public space that’s been devoted to cars includes 19,000 lane miles for driving and three million free on-street parking spaces which comes out to 1.5 spaces for every car in the city. This is while only a minority of residents drive a car to work.
The key findings of the report reveal that people who live outside New York City drive 4.4 million cars and trucks through the city on a daily basis. Traffic crashes cost the City’s economy $4.29 billion annually, and NYC’s fatality rate is also about a quarter of the national rate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he hadn’t read the proposal on Monday morning, but he broadly supports efforts to move away from cars to open public space and build up public transportation, saying “this is the way of the future, unquestionably,” as reported by amnewyork.
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang called the plan “admirable,” per StreetsBlog, and said he was “looking forward to digging into the details.”
The city has been rolling out an Open Streets plan during Covid to allow for greater social distancing amidst the pandemic. Open Streets was slated to return to the UWS last December but the Department of Transportation ended up postponing the plan. The goal was to reopen the roadbed on West End Avenue from 88th to 95th Streets for pedestrians.
People who live and work in this city and have no transit options to get to their place of work or to take care of family members (now more than ever) – either reverse commuting or commuting in – will not be able to afford the parking garage rates as they exist today if we continue to support this kind of nonsense. If the city needs money, make residential parking in the city affordable and mandatory in certain neighborhoods during certain times of the day, and have delivery trucks come in after rush hour times. The UWS has already lost more than its share of parking spaces – meanwhile and I am not sure if these “transportation” groups have heard, but there are two of the largest parks abutting the UWS neighborhood – Central and Riverside Parks! Enough with this constant attack on the middle class who have lived and have supported this neighborhood through the decades in both good and bad times! Stop. The. Madness.! There are so many other more important issues this city needs to address – crime, homelessness, business deserts, quality of life (sanitation), crime, crime, crime, etc. crime…
Thank you Great Scott for voicing the truth about how we here on the UWS are punished and experimented with.
We do not need West End Avenue closed for the six people that may happen to walk along that closed-off corridor.
Your idea’s recognize what is more important to our needs as a community, and I for one support them.
Now, can we regain our four lane WEA?
The back up north of 96th Street is 5-6 blocks long for cars heading to the WS Highway entrance, and at rush hour the cars heading North is unbelievably long!
If bike and pedestrian traffic is the goal, you must give us streets that can be walked and ridden on. The pothole problem is back with a vengeance. Seems like every street is a mine field. I don’t understand why every year the pothole problem manifests itself. There has to be cement or asphalt that is not as sensitive to salt and frozen water during the winter. Seems like a big scam perpetrated by the suppliers of the asphalt. Riding a bike on most streets in New York City right now is a potential death ride. The lawsuits will eat up the savings of the project.
These anti-transportation groups must have an awful lot of time to hang out. The streets that are currently closed are not utilized, maybe one little child on a tricycle on a closed four-lane street that is preventing businesses from receiving shipments of merchandise to stay in business. These people obviously don’t need to shop in grocery stores or need services like plumbers or electricians or contractors to deliver services? The current bike lanes are only used by sanitation trucks who can’t maintain their routes to provide regular services to public trash baskets or residential buildings. We have ample public parks and playgrounds for pedestrians. What we gave over to restaurants to build in the streets has not proven very effective either. The restaurants who made it work, utilized the sidewalk space just fine for the short time they were closed. Free “stuff” is not always for the good of the people, particularly when it is government regulated by a government that fails to oversee.
I would just be repeating what Scott, Stephanie, David and Michael have expressed above. Try doing the street closure, bike parking and thrashing of skateboards against the East Side Monuments, for a change ! No one utilizes the closed streets, I have seen cars go on them, and YES we have two beautiful parks for a good reason!!!
Terry
Please stop trying to make over the city to be like the suburbs. We who have lived in the city for many years like it as it is, URBAN. If you want a different environment, please feel free to leave and move to the suburbs so your children can play in the streets as I did as a child. It’s ridiculous that you think you need more parks on the UWS. As pointed out already, you are bracketed by 2 of the most lovely parks in the city. If you are looking for greenery, go to one of the parks and enjoy, but stop trying to turn the city into a pedestrian mall.
You Luddites have NO VISION. I love NYC, but it could be even better. Cities are NOT the place for cars. Read in the NYTimes today about the MANY cities in Europe improving the quality of life by limiting cars: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/28/business/heidelberg-cars-environment.html.
Less than 25% of households on the UWS own cars and it appears most are not necessary to get to work as I surveyed my neighborhood days after the recent snow storms and the majority of the cars had not moved an inch. We need car share for those times when it makes sense and we need to get the garbage off our sidewalks. Businesses thrive when cars are removed. (Check the commercial rents in Times square pre and post the pedestrianization.)
This is getting tiring. For UWS residents there are two beautiful parks where you can walk stroll, lie down in the middle & fall asleep etc. They’re called Central Park & Riverside Park. Clearly this initiative is driven by people who are either from out of town that grew up in Boulder, CO or some such town. Or they’re people who just need to gripe about what they don’t like about Manhattan and need to be on a mission. For the few people who would ‘stroll’ all day long on West End Ave it’s seems absurd to close it down for the few.
The city has already re-purposed parking in favor or Citi Bikes & bike lanes, so Bloomberg’s old buddy can cash in. Clearly these people would like to see all cars removed. Maybe we should bring back horse & buggies? Would this be ok for the anti automobile folks? There is a total lack of enforcement on the part of the police department & the city to clamp down on bike riders. I constantly see bike riders & skateboarders on the sidewalks, going in the wrong direction, not using bike lanes etc and when someone almost gets knocked down by their carelessness, it’s the fault of the pedestrians! I have seen a few fist fights as well. Bike rides also don’t heed the traffic regulations, it’s like a free for all.
Automobile transportation is an essential tool for our economy as well as for people who need cars for personal reasons. Parking is becoming prohibitive since they keep raising the rates knowing there’s no longer places to park. Not everyone can afford parking in a lot. A person w/ a 20 something year old vehicle that’s been paid up for years, isn’t going to spend $600 a month or more on parking. Just because some elected or self-imposed official comes up w/ a clever idea doesn’t mean it has tone implemented. It’s time to find some other issue to try & fix. maybe something that benefits everybody.