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Hipster Duck

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I found this interesting. There is the same stoking of a "culture war" mentality among pro-car councilors and advocates in New York but, unlike Toronto, there was swift action in closing and pedestrianizing Broadway from Times Square to Herald Square thanks, mainly, to a very powerful DOT commish.

I'll be following this move closely over the next few months to determine whether this actually paralyzes traffic any more on Manhattan than before. I think this will be the litmus test for traffic closings on the rest of the continent, such as our very own, on going Jarvis debate.

Honk, Honk, Aaah
Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. As she prepares to close swaths of Broadway to cars next week, she is igniting a peculiar new culture war—over the role of the automobile in New York.

By Michael Crowley
Published May 17, 2009

New York Magazine

dot090525_1_250.jpg


Sometime early Sunday morning this Memorial Day weekend, a work crew from the New York City Department of Transportation will arrive in Times Square. Waiting for a pause in traffic, the team will close off Broadway at 47th Street, directing southbound cars east to Seventh Avenue. In the weeks to come, construction workers will refashion the next five blocks of the boulevard, turning one of the world’s most congested stretches of asphalt into a 58,000-foot pedestrian plaza. The same will happen a few blocks south, where another stretch of Broadway—from 33rd Street to 35th Street, at Herald Square—will be closed to cars and, by fall, dotted with café tables free for public use.

Read the full article
 
Now that's what I call a war on cars.

It's truly amazing to me that in Toronto the right (and hell, a good chunk of the centre) is having a conniption over losing a single lane of Jarvis, and maybe some spots on Roncesvalles. 1/10th of what's going on in New York (and 1/100th in London) would have the good burghers of Hogtown out with pitchforks.
 
It was phased into effect yesterday though, because of Memorial Day, tomorrow if the first real test.

You can go to NY Times or just about anywhere else and read about it. I'm hitting NYC in August and very curious to see what it all looks like. Even in the unlikely event it fails, you HAVE to admire the ambition.
 
but guys, they can only do this because they have an amazing transit system. ;)
 
but guys, they can only do this because they have an amazing transit system. ;)

Yep. I can't wait for the day Toronto gets a couple of north-sound underground rapid-transit lines near Yonge Street. Then we could do something like this!
 
Yep. I can't wait for the day Toronto gets a couple of north-sound underground rapid-transit lines near Yonge Street. Then we could do something like this!

If only we had a similar underground train line near the Danforth and Bloor corridors...
 
I would like to see some more renders of this, I can't really imagine this being a success.
dot090525_1_250.jpg

This just looks dumb. I just don't see the aesthetic appeal of laying sod along such a hyperbolic street as this. It ruins the futuristic vibe in favor of, from what I have seen, nothing.

Wait, is this render a joke? Or do they actually expect us to believe that rabbits and butterflies to reinhabit Times Square?

Pedestrian streets shouldn't be so wildly out of scale with people.
 
It's truly amazing to me that in Toronto the right (and hell, a good chunk of the centre) is having a conniption over losing a single lane of Jarvis, and maybe some spots on Roncesvalles. 1/10th of what's going on in New York (and 1/100th in London) would have the good burghers of Hogtown out with pitchforks.

This is not at all comparable to Jarvis for the following reasons:

1) There are over a dozen subway stations and a regional rail station within a few minute's walk of the Broadway road closure. Times Square is at the convergence of all major subway lines, therefore the whole metro area has superb public transit access to this area.

2) Over 350,000 pedestrians use this area per day according to the article. Pedestrians already dominate.

3) There are numerous equally large parallel arteries within a few hundred metres east and west. With Broadway closed, cars still have many equally convenient options.

Jarvis has none of these going for it. Firstly, the local area as well as the city in general are poorly serviced by subway. Many people still need to drive in Toronto. Secondly, Jarvis is not a major pedestrian route, and few pedestrians or cyclists will benefit. Why not reduce the size of Yonge or Dundas near Dundas Square instead? Thirdly, Jarvis is the primary artery into the downtown core on the east side. There are no alternatives for cars.

In short, close lanes where public transit access is at its best, non auto based transportation is at its max, and where cars have alternatives. The City should consider narrowing parts of Yonge near major subway stations, or perhaps Front near Union Station. As someone who is against the Jarvis narrowing, I think that the Broadway plan is fantastic.
 
Closing parts of Broadway in Manhattan to cars...

Everyone: I have read reports on this and living in the NYC area I wonder how this is going over with the two big people factions in NYC-vehicle drivers and pedestrians/cyclists.
Many vehicle drivers dislike it but pedestrians and cyclists welcome it.
That description of Janette Sadik-Khan is interesting because many know that Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs were polar opposites to one another in the subject of Urban Transportation for NYC.
With MTA bridge tolls going up next month I now wonder if NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg will bring up the congestion pricing subject again.
It was based on London's system that can be found here:
www.cclondon.com/ charging tolls on peak roads highest at peak times.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out...LI MIKE
 
LI Mike,

Janette Sadhik-Khan is more Robert Moses than Jane Jacobs. JJ was a great lady and she knew how a city was meant to work, but you can't use Jacobian principles to plan a city's transportation network - whether for cars, bikes, or public transit. You just have to step on toes and if you try to satisfy every merchant or concerned mother you're just not going to get very far. Robert Moses went down badly in history because the particular transportation mode he rammed through was bad for urban vibrancy, exacerbated social problems and was inefficient and badly suited for serving the mobility needs of a dense city. I don't think he'll go down badly for being ambitious - on the contrary, I hope (and New Yorkers generally do) he will be remembered as somebody who got things done.

Believe me, Toronto has tried to use the Jacobian approach to transport planning in the last 20 years and what we have to show for it is a piecemeal selection of every mode possible (whether subways, LRTs, freeways or bike lanes) but they're all scattered stubs that don't form a cohesive whole.
 
^ Great thing about Caro's biography of Moses is that it shows how his get-it-done methods worked wonders in the creation of NY state and city parks and some other completely laudable achievements, *and*, at the same time, the other side of that coin vis-a-vis expressways, etc. Don't forget, he *did* start his career as a deadly serious civic reformer and opponent of Tammany Hall.

And to carry the analogy into present-day Toronto, it seems we await the reincarnation of a meld of Fred Gardiner/Sam Cass/R.C. Harris/William C. McBrien with regards to transit planning.
 
Fiendish,

While a singular person like that doesn't exist in Toronto right now, I would say that Transit City embodies Robert Moses-style top-down planning. It's all there: the lack of public consultation, a lack of transparency in planning documents (eg: grossly inflated subway construction costs) and tainted with dogma. Like the Moses freeways, Transit City is a mediocre project that will be rammed down our collective throats and there's very little we can do about it. That's the thread with autocratic planning - if the plan is good, it can do wonders, but if the plan is bad, you're just going to have to get out of the way and swallow it.
 
Agreed. The question is, just *who* created Transit City? Whose face do we put to this?

The spirit of:
RobertMoses.jpg


+

160_giambrone_061206.jpg


with a little help from...

450_miller1_090116.jpg


and egged on by...

winners-steve.jpg


So who, ultimately, is the face of Transit City? When the history of it is written, who will we point to, good or ill?
 
This is not at all comparable to Jarvis for the following reasons:

1) There are over a dozen subway stations and a regional rail station within a few minute's walk of the Broadway road closure. Times Square is at the convergence of all major subway lines, therefore the whole metro area has superb public transit access to this area.

2) Over 350,000 pedestrians use this area per day according to the article. Pedestrians already dominate.

3) There are numerous equally large parallel arteries within a few hundred metres east and west. With Broadway closed, cars still have many equally convenient options.

Jarvis has none of these going for it. Firstly, the local area as well as the city in general are poorly serviced by subway. Many people still need to drive in Toronto. Secondly, Jarvis is not a major pedestrian route, and few pedestrians or cyclists will benefit. Why not reduce the size of Yonge or Dundas near Dundas Square instead? Thirdly, Jarvis is the primary artery into the downtown core on the east side. There are no alternatives for cars.

In short, close lanes where public transit access is at its best, non auto based transportation is at its max, and where cars have alternatives. The City should consider narrowing parts of Yonge near major subway stations, or perhaps Front near Union Station. As someone who is against the Jarvis narrowing, I think that the Broadway plan is fantastic.
I'd like to see the 5th lane on Jarvis kept for cars, while I'd also like to see Yonge Street closed completely from at Dundas to at least Queen.
 

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