Traffic Free Time Square?

I remember reading that they were going to try it for the summer. I haven't heard anything about them opening it back up to traffic and honestly I think its a great thing to have a part of NYC traffic free. Anyone know if it'll stay this way?

It seems like they have made it pretty permanent. I think it is great and can't imagine it without the extra space. It has not made traffic that bad.

I think it's just another step towards making New York a little more like Disney World every day. Honestly, it's a city, cities have traffic, not permanent block parties.

Lumen2, I agree with you, too. I was up there a few weeks ago - it's like a big outdoor mall. Ew.

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I like it because now I can walk on the sidewalk without people slowing me down.

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I live in New York, I love it. It keeps the tourists from standing on the sidewalk, staring, they can stand out of the way. Also, TimeS Square.

Somewhere along the leap from "more pedestrian space in Times Square" to "Disney World" I must have lost the thread. I'm really not seeing the connection. Since when is Manhattan about cars, anyway? Cities are different than boring suburbs precisely because they're more pedestrian-friendly and cars are optional. That's what gives New York an active street life in front of its stores while a row of stores in the suburbs will be fronted by only a parking lot.

Besides, cities all over the world have outdoor plazas, so again, I'm really not seeing the Disneyfication thing here. If anything, fewer cars and a livelier street scene make the area more truly urban than it was before.

Maybe it's because I'm a perpetual pedestrian, but I love the new arrangement and all the many paths it gives me for walking around the slow-moving tourists in the area, the seating areas I can use while I'm waiting for showtimes, the way I can cross the street quickly instead of waiting for a bunch of drivers who should probably have taken the subway anyway. I find cars to be far more anti-city than the Disney Store. (I probably read too much Jane Jacobs as a child.)

In recent years, New York has become less about "real life" and more about "real money", to put it in the most inarticulate way. Closing off Times Square to traffic, which is an intersection, is basically Bloomberg's way of encouraging more tourist activity in the hot spot. It gives them safe havens from any woes, lots of cheap stores, and Broadway theaters crammed-full of musicals based on movies. Not to mention the patio chairs and tables and the ugly beige gravel. It's seizing one of the busiest intersections, a mainstay for New Yorkers who actually need to get to and from work, and handing it over to tourists.

It's not just Times Square; all of New York is getting plasticized, like that horrible new Hollister flagship store or basically anywhere on 7th Avenue. I chose "Disney World" as an adjective because that's exactly what this action is doing: turning a city into an amusement park.


"Cities are different than boring suburbs precisely because they're more pedestrian-friendly and cars are optional."

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Updated On: 9/8/09 at 12:11 AM

Some of you are acting as if the whole traffic free Times Square has prohibited New Yorkers from getting to work.

Sure, it might block one of the routes that they can take, but... I don't think it had any huge impact on any real New Yorkers. Plus, if you hate the tourists, why do you work in the most touristy city in the world?

Tourists check in and they don't check out!

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It's a wonderful addition to the city.

I always seemed to get stuck on 46th Street because the crowd was so thick you could barely walk through it. This was, partly, because of the musicians who would plant themselves at that corner and draw a crowd. It's nice to be able to get through that area on the days I do choose to walk up 7th.

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It gives them safe havens from any woes, lots of cheap stores, and Broadway theaters crammed-full of musicals based on movies.

Yes, all FOUR of them.