Broadway to Open Up to Cyclists and Pedestrians!
Jul 12th, 2008 by Jervey
Truly amazing development on the fabric of NYC’s streets. Two lanes of Broadway to be rededicated to a pedestrian plaza and a bike lane. From the Times:
In a surprising reshaping of the urban landscape, the city is creating a public esplanade along a portion of one of its most prominent streets, Broadway in Midtown, setting aside the east side of the roadway for a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters.
The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, will run from 42nd Street to Herald Square. Scheduled to open in mid-August, it will change that section of Broadway from a four-lane to a two-lane street…
Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that the esplanade, which was designed with the help of Jan Gehl, a well-known urban designer based in Copenhagen who has been hired as a consultant by the city, was part of a larger program to turn underused street space into public plazas in each of the city’s 59 community board districts.
“Broadway is not famous because there are a gazillion cars going through it,” she said. “We’re trying to have the public space match the name. It’s a really important signal of how we can transform the streets of New York,” she added.
Meanwhile, Streetsblog has an interesting take on the semantics the Times uses to tell the story.
Take the headline on today’s Broadway Boulevard piece*: “Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes.” Why not “Opening on Broadway: More Sidewalk Space”?
They get into it here.