Results tagged “pedestrianplaza”

      

It's happened! The lawn chairs, placed in the Times Square pedestrian plazas to much derision, pain and enjoyment, have been gathered up to make way for more permanent chairs. The Times Square Alliance asked sculptor Jason Peters to create some art from the chairs, and the Post says he used "zip ties to lash about 70 of the chairs together Friday morning in an installation that will stay up until 9 p.m. tonight. Maybe you can say adieu before the public screening of the Mad Men premiere in Times Square at 10 p.m. (details).

Opinions remain bitterly divided on the merits of the new Broadway pedestrian plazas that opened on Memorial Day, and an official analysis of the pilot program's traffic impact won't be available any time soon. The Times has found that the DOT's previous timeline for studying the changes has been pushed back because the department still isn't finished hanging traffic signals, painting roads, building out the plazas and adding concrete barriers. Officials won't start measuring the program's effects until the middle of August and won't submit a final report until December, when Bloomberg will decide whether to make the changes permanent. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says, "When we have finished the project, we will begin collecting the data. You wouldn’t want to look at a Picasso that’s halfway done." But some critics are already trashing Sadik-Khan's masterpiece; cab driver Fhahidul Hossain tells the Times, "If you have one fare to go to the theater district, your day or night is finished. A 10-minute fare is going to take you an hour or so. It's a nightmare. In Manhattan, you have to move, man. You cannot do it like this. This is not Europe. This is New York City, for God's sake!" And don't even get Hossain started on those lawn chairs.

Andrea Peyser isn't the only tabloid columnist with a deep disdain for the new car-free sections of Broadway; Mike Lupica at the Daily News is now pouring out the Haterade with an article dismissing what he calls "Bloomberg Beach" as "Bloomberg's revenge." In his eyes, the whole thing is just Bloomberg's petulant way of bending New York's traffic patterns to his will after his congestion pricing plan got sandbagged by Albany. Which, yeah, Bloomberg's a little prince who throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way, but Lupica's determined to toss the baby out with the bath water.

Mayor Bloomberg says those down-market beach chairs in the new car-free sections of Broadway have got to go. Speaking about the new pedestrian plazas on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg revealed his disdain for the inexpensive chairs, which have been subjected to savage criticism from the likes of cranky Post columnist Andrea Peyser, who derided them as "flimsy furniture that littered the streets like a going-out-of-business sale." Hizzoner has sided with the haters, and wants everyone to know that once work on the pedestrian plazas is complete, "there will not be those kinds of lounges." Street furniture controversy aside, the mayor declared the experiment, which reroutes southbound traffic to Seventh Avenue in an attempt to reduce congestion, an overwhelming success: "So far, it is working exactly as the computer modeling says it will." Of course, not even the most powerful computer in the world can accurately gauge New Yorkers' capacity for complaining.

On Wednesday, frothing New York Post demagogue Andrea Peyser dropped her instant-classic diatribe against the new car-free pedestrian plazas on Broadway, deriding those European tourists who flocked to the open space while finding solidarity with... one homeless man. Joe Miller, who Peyser says "carried his earthly possessions in plastic bags" also shares the columnist's hatred for any human challenge to the automobile's supremacy: "It's terrible. I live in the streets. People smoke in the shelters! I can't stand it."

The new, car-free Broadway blocks of Times Square are still being appraised by pedestrians, drivers, and pundits alike. But one thing they can all agree on: It's quite a sight. On Panoramas.dk, there's a 360-degree image taken from Duffy Square (on top of the new TKTS proscenium) by Jook Leung—check it out here (the above image doesn't do it justice). Update: As eagle-eyed readers noticed, this panorama looks like it was taken before the car-ban went into effect but it was taken on Sunday (here's another shot from Sunday); from the TKTS steps, it looks like this on Memorial Day.

The reviews are in on the new car-free Broadway's impact on the first day of business since traffic was diverted from the main stem between 47th and 42nd Streets and between 35th and 33rd Streets. Unsurprisingly, the Post has been breathlessly scaremongering in an attempt to milk the populist fear of change for all it's worth, with columnist Andrea Peyser leading the charge in an article headlined "Real NYers 'Malled' by Incredibly Dumb Idea":

       

With seven blocks along Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square closed to vehicular traffic for pedestrian promenading pleasure (oh, and to ease traffic congestion too) on Sunday, New Yorkers and tourists alike have been testing out the suddenly clear streets. The Broadway pedestrian plazas are between 42nd and 47th Streets and between 33rd and 35th Streets, and in the Times Square stretch, there were lawn chairs for perambulators.

It's really happening: Workers are getting ready to transform Broadway traffic lanes into a pedestrian oasis as part of the DOT's plan to ban cars from part of the city's main stem. Mayor Bloomberg and other officials announced the radical move back in February; it involves rerouting vehicular traffic from part of Broadway to Seventh Avenue, a move that they say will improve traffic flow because Broadway itself creates congestion as it cuts southeast across the avenues. Pedestrian plazas with tables and chairs, similar to the new "Broadway Boulevard," will entirely replace motor vehicles on Broadway between 42nd and 47th streets and from 32nd to 35th streets. According to 1010 WINS, work will begin Memorial day weekend, and the transformation will include bike lanes in both sections. According to the DOT, the changes, which include widening Seventh Avenue with another traffic lane, are an "experiment" that will last through the end of the year but may become permanent.