This was the most retarded stunt ever. It sounds good in theory, the reality is that it created nightmarish traffic with lots of idling cars sitting there for hours spewing exhaust fumes. Yeah, I'm sure that made the air fresh and clean, not to mention all of the thousands of gallons of fuel burned unnecessarily.

:ed

As opposed to which other days??

Ed,

Where is the proof of your statement? Even the NYC press reported not much traffic back ups.

Some of the restaurants and retailers along the route did report some lost sales (although others reported much higher sales) and that seemed to be the biggest drawback.

C

Yes, totally retarded. Maybe, had it been scheduled for Sunday mornings, the traffic issues would have been somewhat reduced. But they didn't, so it was/is stupid.

If Bloomberg can somehow resurrect the congestion fee plan, and tie it directly to a closed streets schedule as well, then this can be accomplished in a logical fashion with reasonable results. Am I holding my breath on that?

We close streets in France every saturday to allow easier shopping, ballads, and so on. It works great. Everyone here is happy with that : shops, clients, tourists...

I have always been in favor of congestion pricing but I think this was a great example of what the mayor was trying to accomplish. Even though I drive I still think it is a great idea. Too bad we no longer qualify for that 350 million to improve public transit because we didn't pass it on time.

A big part of the problem isn't the NYC dwellers, its our lousy state government in Albany that blocked it from passing. Huge shame.

Wow! What a beautiful alternative and a great example of things not always needing to stay as they always have. Everything can be redesigned and rethought!

I wanna go back : )

Mexico City also closes every Sunday its beautiful street, Paseo de la Reforma, and there are lots of families byking that day

My proof... um, how about the fact that I was there on Saturday morning, trying to get out of the city, and it was a complete disaster. Nothing moved. While it usually takes me 10-15 minutes to get out of town, on Saturday it took close to an hour, which would have been more if I didn't become more aggressive. And there was no signage anywhere to indicate that traffic patterns had changed. There were virtually no NYPD redirecting traffic. It was just a haphazard, uncoordinated shuttering of some streets here and there- hardly what I would consider a pedestrian paradise. The fact is that NYC on a normal day is great for pedestrians. If people don't want to walk on the sidewalk, go to Central Park! And the last thing we want is to encourage even more people from the outer boroughs and NJ DRIVING into the city just so they can have the novelty of walking around the middle of Park Ave.

Again, I like the concept of a pedestrian city, but the reality is that it is impractical and causes more hardship and pollution than it strives to mitigate.

So the problem might be that it was badly done, not that the idea itself cannot be good. No?

Would have been really nice, but for all of the walking pedestrians in the far left lane, oblivious to the volunteers yelling "bikes to the left, joggers to the right". Almost killed myself to prevent from biking through several "human chain" families - holding hands, blocking several lanes of bike traffic.
Thought it was a really great idea, but really couldn't relax while avoiding pedestrians wandering around Park Ave aimlessly. Although it was really cool getting from 72nd and Park to the Brooklyn Bridge so quickly.