This used to be the scene of gridlocked traffic. Photo: berk2804

Seven years ago, when Tim Tompkins took over as president of the Times Square Alliance, one of New York's largest BIDs, security and cleanliness were the top concerns. Despite incessant traffic and "pedlock," few decision-makers were focused, at first, on the vision of Times Square as a world-class public space where people take precedence over motor vehicles.

Speaking to a standing-room audience at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research building last week, Tompkins recalled when the lack of regular stabbings and violent crime seemed good enough for the crossroads of the world, and the quality of public space felt too esoteric to address. Gradually, Tompkins helped build public support for dramatic changes, starting with the re-design of Duffy Square. Working with NYCDOT, Tompkins began chipping away at the space allocated to cars and opening it up to pedestrians. Shortly after the completion of Duffy Square last October, said Tompkins, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan approached him about closing down a portion of Broadway to vehicles to create public plazas.

Now, cities around the country view the new Times Square plazas as potential precedents for transforming their own under-utilized or overcrowded streets into quality pedestrian space. Streetsblog San Francisco caught up with Tompkins during his west coast trip to talk about the new Times Square, how it came about, and the lessons we can draw from its ongoing transformation. Here is an edited transcript of the interview. 

Matthew Roth: What in your opinion has been the biggest change in Times Square over the past decade?

Tim Tompkins: The challenge of Times Square as a public space had changed. It’s not enough that it's just sort of safe to be there. This is one of the world's great public spaces. What's missing?

Over the last couple of decades we've learned a lot about how to make parks great, and that parks are important to life of the city. I think there's been an evolution over the last decade thanks to organizations like [Streetsblog], and Project for Public Spaces, and Transportation Alternatives that have said, "There is another part of the public realm, there is another part of city life that we need to pay attention to."

The re-designed Duffy Square. Photo: Brad Aaron.

This is a place where you can be still, but you're still in the city. You're experiencing the city, but you don't have to stand or walk through it the way you did before. Finally, we created a place for that observation to happen, for people to see what we called the second best show on Broadway, which is Times Square itself. It’s people watching people in this unique way. And so sometimes it’s about looking up, sometimes it’s about noticing the store across the street, but as much as anything it’s about watching this urban fugue, which is the special nature of a public space in the city, where you’ve got all these different things going on. Different people, different languages, different looks, and a little bit of chaos, but also a tremendous amount of energy.

MR: Now that you've closed portions of Broadway to cars and opened it up to people, what would you say to skeptics of pedestrianization and pilots that limit private vehicles?

TT: Pedestrianization of a former roadway is a mixture of art and science. There are people who have studied this -- you know, what do people do in public spaces -- and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It has to do with design, management, the nature of the space, what’s going on around it. So it’s not an easy thing to get right. One of the great things about this commissioner and mayor is that they’re willing to experiment and see what happens.

We're still learning how to make this work. How to bring some authentic sort of street-style programming back to Times Square without overwhelming it, without it being too noisy for the office tenants, or the theaters. How to have the furniture look good, but not be just like everything else. Even just how you keep it clean so it doesn’t look ratty. Because when it was asphalt it’s like, "Well this is a street, it’s not supposed to look good." The second it was painted red asphalt, then there was this challenge, because people were no longer looking at it as a street that happened to have a chair on it, they were looking at it as a public space, and they were like, "This is not Piazza San Marco, this is crap."  And in some ways they're right, but it's a function of shifting expectations.

MR: What has the reaction been among businesses in the district?

TT: I think that there was definitely concern and fear during a time of economic vulnerability, and you've got to acknowledge that. Longer-term interests, like somebody that owns an office building, they’re there for decades, but you know, restaurants in Times Square live hand to mouth. If Broadway tickets are down 20 percent, their business is down 20 percent. You have to pay attention to the reality of somebody's economic situation. 

"The second it was painted red asphalt, then there was this challenge, because people were no longer looking at it as a street that happened to have a chair on it, they were looking at it as a public space, and they were like, 'This is not Piazza San Marco, this is crap.'"

I think at the same time listen to what they say, and then modify the plan accordingly. There were some issues about theater access on 45th Street, and what was going to happen when you change the traffic patterns. We had conversations and DOT was great. They sat down and they said, "Okay, we were initially thinking we wouldn’t let you make a right turn, but we’re going to modify the plan and allow that to happen," and that addressed a really big issue. So that’s another case where it's important to have the conversation between the private interests and the government that’s doing it. And to say, you know, maybe that might not have worked, and then we would have had to say, "Okay, we're three weeks into it, let’s change something else."

The other thing to keep in mind, though, is that you've got to think about your long-term competitiveness. A business understands that you've got a competitive environment. What are your advantages versus some other place? In a place like San Francisco, in a place like Times Square, they're major tourist destinations, and people can choose to go somewhere else. Just like whether it's an amusement park, or it's a beach resort, they’ve got to do some upgrades, they've got to pay attention to the competitive environment and say, "What’s going to keep people coming here?"

Newly digitized AAA mag: crazy for cars, mad about pedestrian streets.

The “test project,” now four months old, has been criticized by some as both tacky and ill-suited to the location. While we tend to agree, we are more concerned with serious safety issues created by mixing cross-town traffic and pedestrians, particularly where many of them are vacationing tourists. We also have yet to see the environmental and congestion benefits to justify the experiment’s costs.

The pedestrian plaza concept was the brainchild of city transportation officials intrigued with the idea of importing the pedestrian zones common in Europe to New York City. But so far, the project appears to be an unnatural fit for the heart of America’s biggest city. After all, Times Square is not Rome, Paris or Barcelona, where piazzas and squares lined with cafes and restaurants evolved naturally in the urban landscape.

Yep, all of a sudden pedestrians are mixing with crosstown traffic. Remember back when that never happened? Me neither.

Have fun picking this apart, Streetsbloggers. I'll just go out on a limb here and wager that the editorialists at AAA, headquartered out in Nassau, don't represent the views of real New Yorkers and probably never walked around with all those "vacationing tourists" squeezed into traffic by the sidewalk crunch at the old Times Square.

After the jump, a nice rejoinder from genuine city dwellers, courtesy of City Room, about the pleasures of having places to socialize in public.

On busy evening in Times Square, at the pedestrian mall on Broadway, E. J. Bonilla and Melissa Oyola found an empty table and two chairs, content among the seas of calm and waves of chaos surrounding them.

This is date night.

“Ever since they hooked this place up, it’s like a lifesaver,” Mr. Bonilla, 21, said. “If you’re with somebody, you’re with them because you like each other. You shouldn’t necessarily need something else to help you guys along.”

Photo: berk2804/Flickr.

But maybe you had your doubts. Maybe the "It's just for tourists!" argument seemed like it might gain some traction. Maybe fears of Carmaggedon would win out.

Today's Q Poll settles the question: Car-free Times Square is a hit. Fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers think it was a good idea to close Broadway to cars and give more space to pedestrians, compared to 35 percent who don't. A surprisingly high number of New Yorkers -- 44 percent -- say they've seen the new Broadway for themselves. That translates to about three and half million people.

When it comes to transformative regional transportation policies, however, advocates still have a steep hill to climb. Majorities oppose East River bridge tolls and congestion pricing, even when the question explicitly states that funds would be used to limit future transit fare increases. Skepticism about the MTA's ability to deliver mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the 7 line extension is very high.

Perhaps most importantly, among transit riders who think the quality of service has declined recently, blame falls on the MTA more than the state legislature. Much more, in fact -- 59 percent to 19 percent. This is troubling.

For the time being, it looks like Pedro Espada and company can rest comfortably in the knowledge that they won't be held accountable for shortchanging our transit system.

But if you're one of the optimists, here's something to build on. Overall support for congestion pricing stands at 40 percent. Okay, that's pretty sobering, but it's significantly higher than the 29 percent support for bridge tolls (maybe labels do matter). It's also higher than the level of public support for congestion charging prior to implementation in Stockholm. And back when congestion pricing was all over the news, we saw this number swing up and down rather dramatically, depending on the phrasing of the question.

We know the needle can be moved. The next time pricing comes up in the legislature, will advocates mobilize a broad enough coalition to move Albany along with it?

When New York City opened up new pedestrian zones in the heart of Midtown this summer, naysayers predicted a traffic nightmare. Nearly two months later, we're still waiting for the much-feared Carmaggedon.

In this video, Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton takes us on a tour of Broadway's car-free squares and boulevard-style blocks, where conditions have improved dramatically for pedestrians, cyclists, and, yes, delivery truck drivers. As Mark says, the counterintuitive truth is that taking away space for cars can improve traffic while making the city safer and more enjoyable for everyone on foot. There are sound theories that help explain why this happens -- concepts like traffic shrinkage and Braess's paradox which are getting more and more attention thanks to projects like this one. While traffic statistics are still being collected by NYCDOT, there's already a convincing argument that Midtown streets are functioning better than before: To understand it, just take a walk down Broadway.

We've been meaning to post this vid from culture mag ANIMAL New York (h/t Gothamist), which neatly undercuts the argument that the newly pedestrianized Broadway is "only for tourists." Sure, the tourists are grateful not to be jostling for space right next to traffic anymore, but so are lots of people from the five boroughs. It is, after all, where 158,000 people go to work every day. Take that, Andrea Peyser.

During the MTA funding debate, Liu was also a vocal opponent of bridge tolls, a stark about-face given his early support for congestion pricing. Tonight you can see the new John Liu in action, when he makes an appearance on NY1's Road to City Hall at 7 p.m. The topic: Broadway's new pedestrian spaces, a transformation Liu pounced on as soon as the plan was announced.

If you're going to tonight's BRT workshop in the Bronx instead, you can catch the NY1 show again at 10:00 p.m.

The full transformation will take a few months to set up, but come Memorial Day, pedestrians will finally have some breathing room at Times Square.

With all those cars headed out of town, DOT is going to re-route traffic at Times Square around Broadway and onto Seventh Avenue. Come Memorial Day morning, New York City will have brand new public spaces carved out of the street, smack in the middle of Midtown. If you're staying in the city for the long weekend, it's time to party.

The Times Square Alliance will be out bright and early Monday setting up beach chairs. Virgil's Barbecue will be firing up the grill. At some point, a giant movie screen will get unfurled for a noon showing of "On the Town" (it's the last day of Fleet Week, folks). I suspect that I won't be the only New Yorker heading over to Times Square for the first time in ages.

So, this year we're not holding anything back: Happy Memorial Day weekend! We'll see you back here on Tuesday.

Fortunately, according to the AP, the pedestrians' injuries were not life-threatening.

It's not clear how tightly the set was controlled at the time. According to the Post, one of those injured was not associated with the movie, and the car ended up smashed into the Sbarro at the corner of 47th and Broadway, which was open for business.

A scene from Midtown early this morning, after Barack Obama was named president-elect.

On the A downtown from Inwood, new passengers were welcomed with screams and cheers at every stop. It was standing room only by the time the train reached 42 Street.

New Yorkers lined the sidewalks in Times Square. Cars rolled through slowly, drivers honking, with passengers hanging from windows waving Obama signs.

Unlike Times Square, by 2 a.m. NBC's "Election Plaza" at Rockefeller Center had pretty much cleared out.

Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7: Brad Aaron
Photo 6: Jennifer Aaron

Broadway Boulevard takes center stage in a USA Today story on New York City's recent pedestrian improvements. Those who questioned whether people would sit in plazas near passing traffic have their answer:

Bianca Assim-Kon, 30, was initially skeptical about the plazas. "I saw them doing this, and my co-worker and I (said) all the tourists are going to sit there and we're going to laugh at them because they're going to get hit" by cars, says Assim-Kon, who works as a production assistant in a building across the street from one of the plazas. "And now here I am, sitting."

Reading a "chick-lit" novel on her lunch break, she says she can eke calm out of the surrounding cacophony. "I'm a New Yorker," Assim-Kon says. "You learn to focus."

Understandable as those initial doubts may have been, anyone familiar with the work of Project for Public Spaces and William H. Whyte could have predicted that, yes, New Yorkers will even venture across a bike lane for a decent place to sit.

Bonus photo and quote from Whyte after the jump.

"I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look."

Photos: Brad Aaron

Projects like Broadway Boulevard are intended, in part, to reduce auto-pedestrian conflicts.

Yesterday traffic agent Donnette Sanz was buried with her infant son. Two weeks ago, she was crossing a Bronx street on her lunch break when she was hit by a van and thrown under a school bus. Her unborn child was delivered prematurely when Sanz was taken to the hospital. He survived only eight days.

The day before Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly honored Sanz at her funeral in Baychester, a police cruiser was observed "doing doughnuts" in a park in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. According to a witness, the spinning patrol car barely missed two kids on tricycles. When informed of this, precinct higher-ups and an NYPD spokesman were unmoved.

Also yesterday, a 10-year-old cyclist was trapped on a median as motorists whizzed by. As he tried to get across the street he was hit by a Mercedes. The scene of the collision is either "not an accident-prone location" (NYPD) or the "worst corner in Queens" (neighborhood resident). The child suffered massive head injuries and remained unconscious at last report. Media accounts took pains to point out that the Mercedes "had the light."

And finally, in Park Slope, an 86-year-old grandfather was hit and killed on Fourth Avenue. Relatives say Antonio Torres was rendered unrecognizable by the collision. The motorist was cited for speeding.

Amid all this carnage and near-carnage, the New York Times dispatched metro reporter William Neuman to the new Broadway Boulevard pedestrian esplanade, apparently to ask lunchtime diners if they thought it was too dangerous to sit there.

Though it looks like it took some doing, Neuman eventually found his money quote:

"It’s a death trap," Mr. Sachinis, a network administrator for a garment company, said with a laugh. "It’ll be up for a month and then somebody’ll get hit and they’ll take it down."

So instead of running a story that asks, say, why a public plaza at the crossroads of the world should ever be considered a "death trap," or putting Broadway Boulevard in the context of other pedestrian- and cyclist-minded improvements across the city, the Times paints the project as a novel intrusion into the rightful domain of speeding cars and trucks.

For our money quote, we turn to commenter Marty Barfowitz:

He's not going to walk down Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn the day after an 86-yo man is mowed down and ask pedestrians standing on the sidewalk if they feel safe. But if he's forced to cover this apparently trivial Broadway crap, he's going to do it with a skeptical eye towards what Bloomy, Janette, DOT and these Streetsbloggy advocacy types are saying.

Not that we haven't seen it before.

Photo: zodak/Flickr

After Summer Streets wrapped up last Saturday, I headed over to Times Square to check out the progress on DOT's "Broadway Boulevard" project. The new street geometry and surfacing are mostly in place, while plantings and furniture have yet to arrive. The bike lane was also fully functional, making this pedicab ride across 41st Street a lot more pleasant than it would have been a few months ago.

Same intersection, different angle. The plaza surfaces are at grade and have a pebbled texture. Crossing distances for pedestrians have been halved...

...which is especially helpful if you're pushing a stroller. More pics after the jump.

The left turn bay at 36th Street.

Here's the left-turn signalization, a la Ninth Avenue, in action.

Can monster promo trucks be banned from parking next to the pedestrian plazas?

A drainage problem at the corner of 37th Street. 

When the boulevard treatment ends, Herald Square Park is just a few steps away. 

Bursting off the sidewalk at 34th Street and 6th Avenue. 

Next item on the agenda: Bigger pedestrian refuges for Herald Square. 

Words fail when watching this clip of an NYPD officer forcibly knocking a Critical Mass rider to the pavement last Friday. The assault was caught on video by a bystander in Times Square. Compounding the injustice, reports Gothamist, is what happened next:

A representative for TIMES UP! tells us that the cyclist in this video was arrested, held for 26 hours, and charged with attempted assault and resisting arrest.

Mark Taylor, an attorney with the firm representing the cyclist, says he is hopeful the charges will be dropped in light of the video evidence. Asked whether the NYPD plans to go ahead with the charges, a department spokesman said the matter is being investigated. Since the video surfaced, the officer has been put on desk duty.

Why is Times Square so crowded?

An article in yesterday's New York Times considered that question, asking real estate brokers if businesses might be shying away from the area due to packed streets and sidewalks. According to a survey cited in the article, 68 percent of Times Square office workers say congestion is the top reason they would consider working elsewhere.

Though not everyone the Times spoke with shared his opinion, Robert L. Sammons, a researcher for a commercial brokerage firm and resident of 42nd Street, is concerned.

"I hear a lot of talk about how it’s just so congested in Times Square, and office workers really loathe the area because of that,” he said. "I’ve heard that for a while, but it seems I hear it more and more lately."

Older, crowded buildings are one thing, but at street level, rather than being a "victim of its own success," as the Times puts it, maybe Times Square is a victim of inequitable allocation of public space. That doesn't roll off the tongue quite so nicely, but as pavement-hogging vehicles spread from curb to curb, city pedestrians continue to be crammed into the margins from Park Slope to Penn Station -- and, of course, points north.

Ironically, as pointed out in the story, one of the primary reasons Times Square is so popular is its status as a major transit hub, bringing in millions of people who must fight with cars, trucks and, consequently, each other, once above ground.

Relief could be on the way, though.

Now a plan, financed by the city and headed by the Times Square Alliance, is being developed to alleviate the growing pressure from pedestrian and vehicle traffic in Times Square by widening and redesigning its central plaza, Duffy Square, where the TKTS discount booth is located. More details are to be announced in the next couple of months, and further work is expected to begin in the spring of 2009 to manage the success of Times Square.

Sounds like a job for a certain Danish urban consultant.

Photo: midweekpost/Flickr

Less than three months after they appeared on Seventh Avenue in Times Square, some of New York City's first sharrows are well on their way to disappearing. And so you have to wonder: Can the city's commitment to 200 miles of new bike lanes in three years be meaningful if this is their condition so soon after they were painted? Looks like another argument for physically separated bike lanes.

Is this road meant to be shared with unicycles?

Visit them before it's too late!