New York City has announced a plan to convert two of Broadway’s four lanes into a public esplanade. The surprise move will turn half of the Great White Way between Herald Square and 42nd Street into public space featuring a dedicated bike lane alongside a pedestrian walkway with room for outdoor cafe seating and plant and flower boxes. The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, is set to open mid-August of this summer.

This is not the first restructuring of traffic patterns on Broadway this year however. A few weeks ago I noticed for the first time that downtown near City Hall on down to Wall Street, automobile Broadway had been reduced to one lane, with the other lanes dedicated to the city and regional bus lines that bring so many people down to the city’s second largest business district.

The moves suggest that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not going quietly on his vision for the future of transportation in NYC after losing the fight on congestion pricing in the state legislature in Albany earlier this year. The thwarted plan would have charged all cars to enter Manhattan south of 59th Street during business hours Monday through Friday, much like the current system set up in the City of London. It was killed however when a group of Outer Borough State Assemblymen anonymously killed the measure in a closed door meeting, not even allowing it to come to a vote - a tactic Bloomberg termed “a special kind of cowardice”. But congestion pricing or no congestion pricing, the Mayor is reshaping commuting in the city by increasing space for bike lanes, public transit and pedestrian spaces, while squeezing already congested cars even tighter in the Big Apple.

You can takepart in Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for a less congeste, more environmentally friendly New York City by checking out Transportation Alternatives.

LINKS:

NY Times: Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes

Daily Record: NYC will close two lanes to cars on Broadway

WTOP News: NYC will close 2 lanes to traffic