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CARS TO BE BARRED IN TIMES SQUARE

CARS TO BE BARRED IN TIMES SQUARE

NY Times * February 27, 2009

NEW YORK CITY -- NY Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has unveiled a plan to bar cars entirely from Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square. They would share the thoroughfare with a bike lane and a promenade along the rest of the stretch from 59th Street to a new plaza at 23rd Street.

He said that the traffic patterns on Broadway would be changed on Memorial Day weekend in late May. Work to create the plazas would be finished over the summer. If the completed project is considered successful at the end of the year, it is to be retained.

Mr. Bloomberg said the plan would relieve traffic congestion and make more room for pedestrians, enhancing some of the city's most popular public spaces. But it could also change the very nature of some of Manhattan's busiest and most famous areas, including the theater district, Times Square, the fashion district and Macy's front stoop.

"People avoid Times Square because the traffic is so terrible and people are getting pushed out into the streets, the sidewalks can't handle it," Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in a restaurant at the Marriott Marquis, a hotel overlooking Times Square.

"People don't come to look at cars stuck in traffic," the mayor said. "They come to look at the lights, the buildings and the excitement, and this is going to have a lot more of it."

Just as happens with all proposals to change the fabric of the city, this one aroused a range of passionate reactions, many of them driven, not surprisingly, by self-interest: from taxi drivers, pedestrians, truck drivers, tourists, business executives and office workers.

The centerpiece of the mayor's plan calls for shutting down Broadway to vehicles from 47th Street to 42nd Street in Times Square and from 35th Street to 33rd Street at Herald Square. In those blocks, large new plazas would be created, with a gravelly surface and movable chairs and tables with umbrellas. Cross-town traffic would continue to cross Broadway in both areas, as it does now. City officials said the arrangement would make traffic move more freely, eliminating the backups that often occur where Broadway intersects with avenues. In Times Square, all downtown vehicular traffic would run on Seventh Avenue. Officials said traffic would improve the most at Avenue of the Americas, where it intersects with Broadway at 34th Street. At that spot, officials said, the green light for traffic on the avenue, which heads uptown, would be lengthened to 53 seconds from 32 seconds. The duration of green lights on 34th Street at the intersection would also be lengthened slightly. The $1.5 million plan builds on a project the city began last summer called Broadway Boulevard, which narrowed Broadway from four lanes to two from 42nd Street to 35th Street. The two closed lanes were set aside for public space that includes chairs, tables, benches and a bike lane, and is protected from passing traffic by large concrete planters.

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