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Transportation United States

NYC Will Close Public Roads To Traffic To Create More Recreational Space (cnet.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the socially-distanced dept.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday the city will close 40 miles worth of streets near parks to give residents a lot more room to get out of their homes. CNET reports: The eventual goal is to open 100 miles of public roads for residents to bike, walk, jog and more while spreading groups of people out. It's not clear which roads will be affected yet, but Mayor De Blasio said the street closures will be "mostly" near parks. Last week, the city of Milan announced that 22 miles of streets will be transformed over the summer, with a rapid, experimental citywide expansion of cycling and walking space to protect residents as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Many other cities across the world are expected to enact similar schemes to help social distancing.
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NYC Will Close Public Roads To Traffic To Create More Recreational Space More

NYC Will Close Public Roads To Traffic To Create More Recreational Space

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  • Going to be interesting to see (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:04PM (#59998516)
    the exceptions. I am thinking SUVs and limos for the elites.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    • The elite class will use the helioports atop the buildings they own, undoubtedly hoping for a travel experience unlike Kobe & Stevie Ray Vaughn.

      Though the elite continue to increase their individual carbon footprint, there just aren't that many of them, and the carbon offset of the common man biking and walking will have a genuine positive effect.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        No, it's walkability. The ability to walk to all your social requirements, work, live and play, all readily accessible in a safe properly policed environment. With electric vehicles and cleaner healthier cities, those cities and inner burbs will gentrify, so people can walk to all the places they mostly need and desire for a healthy balanced life style. The less well off will require to commute from satellite residential towns with internal walkability beyond the commute, not the core business locale but sa

        • Because the weather is always pleasant, nothing is ever further than 3 blocks from anyone's home, and nobody ever needs to move many things, heavy things or bulky things, right? Of course, nobody has children that might need to go to to a variety of places in short order, and everyone is healthy enough for all that walking.

          A true Utopia.

          • and nobody ever needs to move many things, heavy things or bulky things, right?

            There will be underground tunnels for that purpose,
            as there is in all the world's theme parks.

            nobody has children that might need to go to to a variety of places in short order

            Huh?

            and everyone is healthy enough for all that walking.

            There will still be things like mobility scooters for people who can't.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They already have an exception, it's called being rich. Bezos racked up $16,000 in parking fines while his mansion was being renovated. Parking laws don't apply to him because he's too rich to care about the puny fines.

  • Nice.. (Score:3)

    by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:05PM (#59998524)

    For the 5% of people who will make use of it.

    However.. Doesnt NYC have a traffic problem? Perhaps I missed something here.
    As things 'get back to normal' wont this just create an even worse traffic problem, hence more delays, more pollution, etc?
    Are the sidewalks actually full? Are the parks so tiny there is no space? Are NYC residents abandoning cars in record numbers? No people living on those streets need to drive to their homes? Need deliveries? perhaps so.

    Still, I'm sure it makes for a nice 'we are making the world a better place' story...

    • "However.. Doesnt NYC have a traffic problem?" not anymore and they intend to keep it that way as long as they can.
      The more you close now the less you have to open back up ;)

      Just my 2 cents ;)

      • They intend to push people into the subways. You know, that massive disease vector they refuse to do anything about.

    • Re:Nice.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:55PM (#59998652) Journal

      > However.. Doesnt NYC have a traffic problem? Perhaps I missed something here.

      Increasing roads and road width (lanes) actually causes MORE traffic problems. Reducing road access reduces congestion. At the heart of it is something called Braess's paradox [wikipedia.org], but there are also knock-on effects like induced demand [wikipedia.org].

      It's not even hard to see why; If there are "plenty" of roads then everyone will drive a car and you get traffic jams. If road access is limited, people will take alternate means of transport and there will be less traffic.

      > Are the sidewalks actually full?

      Yes. NYC is a busy town. It actually baffles me when I see photos of other cities and they look absolutely deserted in comparison...

      > Are the parks so tiny there is no space?

      The parks are pretty generous but you need to get to them first.

      > Are NYC residents abandoning cars in record numbers? No people living on those streets need to drive to their homes?

      Depends on what streets they close to traffic; many streets already prohibit long term parking, so anyone living on those streets either don't own a car or are walking to a parking garage. Private off-street tenant parking isn't THAT common. When you live *in* the city a car is much less a necessity.

      > Need deliveries?

      This is perhaps the only real problem, and I'm not entirely sure how they manage it with the portions of the city that are already closed to vehicle traffic. If I had to guess, you either get vehicle access only during certain times of day, or you're stuck hauling things up the block by carts (and I have seen a lot of delivery guys hauling things by cart already).
      =Smidge=

      • Re:Nice.. (Score:4, Informative)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @08:31PM (#59998740)

        bike, walk, jog and more while spreading groups of people out

        Braess's paradox [wikipedia.org] applies to biking, walking, jogging and other activities as well. Not just vehicular traffic. People aren't going to be spread out for very long. Proper social distancing [medium.com] for jogging is around 4 to 5 meters and for cycling it's 10 to 20 meters.

        • Braess's paradox [wikipedia.org] applies to biking, walking, jogging and other activities as well.

          That's good. It's about time people became more active on the whole.

      • Forget deliveries and personal cars of residents, what about commuters? Millions of cars cross into the city via bridge and tunnel every day (pre-covid anyhow).

        • As someone who commuted to NYC for a bit; I drove to the train station and took the LIRR into Penn Station (Or sometimes Woodside) and either hoofed it or took a subway from there. Fuck traffic and fuck trying to find a place to park... train ticket and subway fare costs about as much as garage parking, too.

          Manhattan is actually very accessible once you actually get there. (Brooklyn and Queens maybe not so much, and I've not spent much time in Bronx). It could always be better, but it's currently not bad.
          =S

      • Does Braess apply when drivers are guided by GPS with real-time (or nearly so) travel-time and traffic data?

        • I'd think so, because by the time the "real time" data is updated everyone has already been routed to the "fastest" route, and it's no longer the fastest.

          What would be really keen is if there was a navigation app that actually accounted for the *planned* route of everyone else using the same (or compatible) app, then maybe some large scale route optimization could be applied...
          =Smidge=

  • So Mayor de Blasio can get to parks in Brooklyn faster [nypost.com]. After all, living at Central Park isn't enough, and with the road shut down, he can hurry across the city that much faster?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:13PM (#59998542)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Great! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:21PM (#59998564)
    If theres one thing this pandemic has taught us we need, its less cars and more communities with people more densely packed in together breathing all over each other even more than before! Way to go New York!
    • BRILLIANT! Close the roads, so that more people will have to take the subways, which is how the disease spread in the first place. de Blasio must have a negative IQ.

    • Clearly, people should be moving out of New York City right this minute.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

        Actually they are moving out in droves. People are getting out of NYC every way they can, even before the virus. This is espeically true of family. People have had it. And this is why. This Mayors war of families is over the top crazy.

        http://www.mrbrklyn.com/resour... [mrbrklyn.com]

        • While growth rate has been negative for the past few years, this mirrors the trend is just about every city in the Northeast, and yet de Blasio is the mayor of only one of those cities. It might seem like it's because of the Mayor, because of the timing, but correlation doesn't imply causation.

        • Trying to move in the middle of an epidemic increases the exposure of the mover in addition to the exposure to the mover. It is not just selfish it is self-defeating.

          We already had at least one joker come up to Vermont to "escape the virus" who turned out to already have it.

        • Ahh yes, the apparent slow death of a city that is continuing to grow in population and has been on an upward trend since 1980.

          Here's two relevant soundbites from your obituary:
          “If a large number of people start to leave now, it could spiral,” said Jonathan Bowles,"
          "However, Mr. Bowles and others stressed that New York City’s obituary has been written prematurely several times"

          It's important to actually read your articles, and not just the headlines.

    • If theres one thing this pandemic has taught us we need, its less cars and more communities with people more densely packed in together breathing all over each other even more than before! Way to go New York!

      Well if you compare the car loving USA's infection rate, to the socialising loving EU's rate the pandemic has taught us all that worshiping gasoline doesn't prevent pandemics, so at that point your may as well die a healthy person rather than obese person who loses breath walking up stairs.

      And no I'm not picking on the USA, I'm reflecting on it https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]

  • So that must mean DeBlasio will start refunding city road taxes then, right?

    Isn't that how socialism works? If it's free, it can't be taxed, no?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      So that must mean DeBlasio will start refunding city road taxes then, right?

      Isn't that how socialism works? If it's free, it can't be taxed, no?

      NYC has a "road tax"? In my city we pay a small gas tax that goes to transportation, but most of the funding to build and maintain the roads comes out of general fund taxes and/or bonds.

      • Depends on how the city funds itself. In states with personal property taxes (almost always assessed on cars, nothing else, because you don't have to register jewelry) or road taxes applied to your license plate renewal, this can be rather substantial. I bought a $45k car and paid almost 3% of its new value for the first-year car tag. After five years, that was down to $300 or so, but those first five were a lot, especially as the roads here suck ass. I want to buy a convertible, but the extra body flex fro

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Do you believe that we need a military with paid employees and government-owned equipment? Yes? You're a socialist. Get over it.
  • Some major cities around the world have done this already, and it's been a rousing success. I hope to see more of this kind of transition. Walking/biking more, and less cars on the road. It can only be a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

      No it hasn't been a rousing success. I love it when idiots float into NYC in there twenties and tell families that their cars are no good. In a word, f'ck you. When I have make a doctors appointment for my 83 year old mother, and pick up the kids from cloth shopping and pick up groceries, real adults don't do this on trains or on bikes. And if ANYTHING has been proven by this pandemic, you can only trust your own transportation, and never the Cities public transportation system.

      http://www.brooklyn-livin [brooklyn-living.com]

  • Clip from Americathon (1979):
    https://youtu.be/OaFYcai1vK0?t=104/ [youtu.be]
    The Beach Boys almost had me convinced...

  • You're much, much safer from COVID-19 in your vehicle than walking around in close proximity to others. This seems like the kind of thing where drastic changes can be made with the excuse of COVID-19 that normally couldn't take place.

  • Streets in down town in any major city are there for the tourists. Personally I would be more happy if there were less tourists, not more.

  • This is ostensibly so that pedestrians and bicyclists can put more space between each other, somewhat reducing Corona risks. But the tradeoff is that cars, which eliminate the risk of infecting or being infected by others, are banned. Is that a good idea? Making the unsafe slightly safer by banning the entirely safe?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I think you could argue that no matter which approach you choose, an area as dense as NYC is screwed, because it is just too dense to do well in a pandemic. At least by eliminating the cars, you can increase social distancing for the walking portion of each person's journey, where it would be infeasible otherwise. (Cars can't feasibly replace a meaningful percentage of subway trips, so you're stuck with that part either way.)

      For the elderly/diabetic/autoimmune-disordered people who are at significantly e

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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