I first read about this idea in the RPA’s analysis of congestion pricing, but now that traffic reduction ideas are a talked-about topic, another more radical idea has hit the blogs: closing Broadway to traffic. Paul White of TA brings up the idea in a Gothamist interview, and MemeFirst follows up with some more detailed detailed thoughts.

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while, and my idea is to make it the backbone of a city-wide greenway network and bike highway. Create paths all through the city where people can walk, and which can carry bicycle traffic so bikers don’t have to tangle with cars everywhere. A four-lane street could be reconfigured into an extra lane of expanded sidewalk and pedestrian uses on each side and a bike lane in each direction. Broadway is even wider (4 lanes of traffic plus two for parking, I believe).

I’d have the main backbone run from the Bronx to Morningside Park, down St. Nicholas Ave (a road the city has already identified as a good candidate for a bike lane due to lower traffic), to Central Park along the loop drive with a branch over the 59th Street Bridge, then down Seventh Avenue to Times Square, where the Times Square Alliance already wants to remove the cutover between 7th and Broadway. It would continue down Broadway, removing the awful traffic snarl at Herald Square where two large roads cross at a very acute angle, to Madison Square.

At this point, we could either go down 5th Ave to Washington Square Park, around or through the park; or down Broadway to Union Square, then University; or all the way down Broadway. Broadway is the main southbound route in the East Village, so taking Broadway would require something like reversing the traffic direction on Lafayette Street. 5th and University aren’t quite as important. From Houston on down there are a lot of options, none obvious. Eventually the route should reach the Williamsburg Bridge and either the Manhattan or Brooklyn bridge.

That would form the main backbone. Routes in the Bronx, Queens, northern Brooklyn (Williamsburg/Bushwick), and “South Brooklyn” (the neighborhoods on either side of Flatbush Avenue) would connect the backbone to destinations such as the Bronx Zoo and the existing and planned Bronx greenways, Flushing Meadows, Prospect Park, and Coney Island. And there’s no way to ride across the Verrazano today, but perhaps a branch could reach New York’s most disconnected borough as well.

Update: DCP created a greenway plan in 1993 including a proposed greenway network (best image is in this PDF). Some of the outer greenways have been built, others are being planned, but a Manhattan backbone would tie it all together.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.