New Plaza, 'Slow Streets' Coming To Broadway In Midtown: City

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Three busy stretches of Broadway in Midtown will be redesigned this spring as part of the city's ongoing project to make the thoroughfare more pedestrian-friendly, city officials said this week.

The three sites — in the Flatiron District, Garment District and near Times Square — will include new pedestrianized spaces, bike lanes, narrower streets to slow car traffic and one fully pedestrianized plaza, representatives from the Department of Transportation told Community Board 5 on Monday.

The new projects are in line with Broadway Vision — an initiative that began in 2009 to make Broadway more accessible to bicyclists and pedestrians — and also inspired by the success of recent programs like Open Streets and Open Restaurants, DOT representatives said.

The most significant of the three new sites is in the Garment District, where a pedestrian plaza will be built between 38th and 40th streets on an area mostly occupied by parking currently. Car traffic will continue to run in a single lane, surrounded by the plaza on both sides.

A few blocks north, the Times Square-area proposal would consist of six blocks of "slow streets" between 47th and 53rd streets, narrowing traffic lanes to slow down vehicle speeds.

The Flatiron work will run between 21st and 23rd streets, and will include newly-marked bike lanes and narrower space for cars.

After DOT presents its plans to the board again in mid-May, construction would begin soon after and be wrapped up by June.

All three projects were designed after DOT reached out to people who live and work nearby, representatives said. The Garment District plaza, for example, follows a 2017 survey by the Garment District Alliance which found that more than 80 percent of respondents wanted to see Broadway closed to vehicles, either seasonally or permanently.

Members of the public who joined Monday's meeting questioned why DOT has not moved more quickly to make swaths of Broadway fully off-limits to cars — a long-held goal of some transportation advocates.

"Oh my god you guys just pedestrianize it," tweeted Travis Elby.

Responding to one such complaint Monday, DOT public space director Emily Weidenhof said there would be "ongoing opportunities to continue to design the corridor for pedestrian and cyclist-only time."