Second weekend of car free streets turns Park Avenue into the city’s favorite temporary bike lane
A city that briefly remembers streets can be for people too
Roads throughout Manhattan closed to drivers for the second weekend in a row for New York City Summer Streets, according to CBS New York’s coverage of the event. For a few hours, cyclists and pedestrians claimed roads normally ruled by honking and double parked delivery vans, a genuinely rare Manhattan phenomenon.
A taste of an alternate timeline
Locals strolling down a car free Park Avenue report a strange, almost suspicious calm, the kind that makes New Yorkers instinctively check for the catch, surely there is a catch, there is always a catch in this city.
Drivers, predictably, feel differently
Motorists rerouted around the closures describe the usual mix of mild inconvenience and grudging acceptance, a familiar seasonal trade off between a few car free hours and everyone else’s uninterrupted commute for the other 51 weekends of the year.
Fazit
Streets for people, briefly, before the honking politely resumes. SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/tag/congestion-pricing/ For more British satire on a related theme, see The London Prat’s UK Heatwaves End in Thunderstorms.