NYC wants to take 25% of its street space away from cars in favor of a walkable/bikeable city
Back when COVID-19 ravaged New York City and turned the city’s transportation needs upside down, significant portions of the road...
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Back when COVID-19 ravaged New York City and turned the city's transportation needs upside down, significant portions of the road space were repurposed for non-car use. From bike lanes to public seating and urban parks, roads that previously saw gridlocked traffic were nearly instantly transformed into public spaces that benefitted a wider group of residents.
After being forced to realize the benefits of such repurposing of streets, the city is now asking, "Why shouldn't it just stay that way?" It's all part of a new plan known as NYC 25×25, which is backed by NYC mayor Eric Adams. The proposal calls for 25% of NYC's street space to be converted into walkable pedestrian plazas, bike lanes, green space, and bus lanes by 2025.
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The logic goes that the vast majority of NYC's streets being dominated by cars doesn't benefit most city residents, and it doesn't really benefit cars either. With traffic-clogged streets moving at an average of 5 mph (8 km/h) in Midtown Manhattan, private automobile transportation in NYC is responsible for a significant portion of the city's carbon emissions, air pollution, and urban grime.
Meanwhile, pedestrians and cyclists are forced to navigate the crowded fringes of roads, often weaving around parked vehicles and heaps of trash awaiting pickup. And that's all before even considering the staggering number of pedestrian and cycling deaths caused by cars in the city.
Repurposing street space would help to both clean the city and better serve its residents.
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The executive director of Transportation Alternatives Danny Harris, of the group behind the 25×25 proposal, explained to the Guardian that "space minus cars equals quality of life."
As Harris continued:
If you live in a place where buying a car and spending $10,000 a year on car-related payments is your only way to get around, then your leaders have failed you and your children. Using streets to simply move and store cars is not optimizing that space. We just got blinded by the car industry and this belief that we should put an SUV in every garage.
Right now, we give most of New York to cars – but imagine if sidewalks were bigger, if you could bike or quickly take the bus anywhere you wanted, if you didn't have huge mounds of garbage on every single street. As New Yorkers, we think of ourselves as being tough. But that doesn't mean we have to live in filth, or that we should fear death or injury every time we cross the street.