KungPowThinking

Around the corner from my office they decided to construct a bike lane and “pedestrian plazas” down the center of Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square. They cut Broadway into two lanes, which happens to be an interesting choice for a city that claims to have major congestion problems. Note: I’m originally from Southern California, and compared to traffic on the 405 or 10 at rush hour, Manhattan traffic is laughable. One of my friends has a theory that they want to make Manhattan traffic and parking so bad that people will quit driving into the city all together. I don’t have a car anymore, so I don’t really care. I’ll leave the traffic management conspiracy theories to the folks who suffer the most. My problem with the recent “construction” is that it’s stupid and pathetic.

So I googled the construction to see if I could find any details online. I found the plans (PDF) and some early concepts at Streetsblog.org, which seem kinda nice. I mean there’s no question this area of Midtown could use some significant beautification and bike lanes are always kinda nice. My problem is with how they went about constructing the so called “pedestrian plazas”. Here’s what they did as far as I can tell.

1. Painted new lane lines down Broadway cutting the car lanes in half
2. Painted a bike lane down the eastern side
3. Poured tar or something similar (I don’t think they actually use tar anymore) all over the space between the car lanes and the new bike lane
4. Dumped sand all over the “tar”
5. Put potted plants and outdoor furniture on the sand covered tar
6. Called it a “pedestrian plaza”

I’m no expert in this stuff, but it seems kinda odd. There are no raised medians around the sand covered “plazas”, the sand doesn’t stick very well so it constantly needs to be manicured, lawn chairs and potted plants do not a plaza make, and it cannot be safe. Besides all that, who in the world wants to sit in the middle of the street while cars are zooming by with exhaust blowing in your face? This half-assed effort reminds me of the so called “park” at Herald Square across from Macy’s. They call it a park, but really it’s a gated off concrete median/lane divider. I mean come on people. If you’re gonna call something a plaza make it a plaza, and if you’re gonna call something a park make a park. No wonder everyone in Manhattan seems so miserable.