FiDi Group Wants To Open Lower Manhattan Streets To Pedestrians

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — A neighborhood group wants the city to open several blocks of Lower Manhattan streets to pedestrians to improve crowding and safety issues in the neighborhood.

The Financial District Neighborhood Association released a report last week with a vision aimed to mitigate the crowded neighborhood — where sidewalks are packed with people, piles of garbage bags, scaffolding and street vendors, the group says.

The group is proposing a pilot program for a "slow-streets" district, where curbs would be eliminated and much of street parking either scrapped or made temporary to allow for street space to be shared with the ever-growing FiDi residents and tourists.

The streets would function as a shared space for cars and pedestrians with no sidewalks or traffic signals — a type of street design already in place in parts of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Bonn, Germany. The district would be bound by Broadway and Water St. on the east and west and City Hall and the Battery to the north and south.

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Image via Financial District Neighborhood Association's Make Way for Lower Manhattan

"Slow streets isn't anything revolutionary because it's already happening in the streets anyways," said Patrick Kennell, president of the FiDi group.

Pedestrians often spill out into the streets when sidewalks become too full.

"It's a safety problem if it's not designated as a slow street," Kennell said.

Under a formal slow-street district, he added, "everybody knows what their rights and responsibilities are. It makes a much safer experience for everybody."

The group wrote a letter to Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg asking that half-a-million dollars in previously allocated funds be used for a pilot program of the slow-streets district April through September this year.

The FiDi group also pitched a second idea in its report to designate a historic walking trail through the neighborhood, which would guide visitors from the Staten Island Ferry up to City Hall, with east and west offshoots towards other destinations, such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center.

Kennell likened it to Boston's Freedom Trail.

Image via Financial District Neighborhood Association's Make Way for Lower Manhattan

"This report is a call to action," Kennell said. "It's our ideas that we're throwing out there. It doesn't mean we think this is the plan and that other ideas aren't doable."

DOT spokesperson Alana Morales said in an email regarding the group's letter to DOT, "we welcome input such as this, which we will review."

Previously, DOT has held shared-streets days in FiDi back in 2016, Streetsblog reported at the time.

Councilmember Margaret Chin supports the FiDi group's plans, saying in a statement, "With its unique colonial-era street grid, including narrow streets and sidewalks, this increasingly congested area deserves more than just a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to essential city services like sanitation and street management."

"I look forward to working collaboratively with the community, city agencies and others to apply fresh ideas to create the pedestrian-friendly neighborhood that we all deserve,” Chin said.

Pino (Joey) Vitale, whose grandfather opened the famed Joe's Pizza, said in a statement, "Speaking as a pizzeria business owner that does a high-volume delivery with bikes, cleaner more organized streets would definitely benefit everyone."

Joe's Pizza, which recently opened a new spot in FiDi, sees lines out the doors regularly.

"Not only [for] my delivery employees but also the countless tourists that come in scratching their heads asking for directions," Vitale said. "We recently opened this location and I can already say all the walking detours because of the construction, cranes and work trucks is an inconvenience. I understand the businesses need ways to receive and send deliveries but there has to be a more effective way."