New York City Becomes Car-Free Zone for Three Days

For three consecutive Saturdays this August, New York City’s famous Park Avenue thoroughfare will close to all cars, trucks and other motorized transportation. The brainchild of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “Summer Streets” will transform the streets into an open park featuring fitness, dance and yoga classes, as well as bicycle rentals.

Bloomberg calls it an experiment, and if it’s successful (which we take to mean other parts of the city not devolving into traffic-coiled chaos) look for more car-free-zone days in the future. According to The New York Times, residents seem to like the idea for the most part. Some small-business owners, however, worry about the negative economic impact of closing 6.9 miles of Park Avenue on the busiest shopping day of the week.

New York is not the first major metropolitan city to try the idea of car-free zones for limited amounts of time. Paris, London and Bogota, Colombia, have all done something similar in hopes of encouraging alternative methods of transportation.

On 3 Days in August, City Will Try No-Car Zone (The New York Times)