Quote:
Originally Posted by mrnyc
major decarscalation!
the mayor explores getting rid of cars around grand army plaza in brooklyn:
City considering car-free redesign for Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn: report
By Ben Brachfeld
Posted on November 13, 2022
more:
https://www.amny.com/new-york/brookl...nd-army-plaza/
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If the MTA can place a bus lane along much of Flatbush Ave, great! I also believe that the bus lane should also be opened for taxis, ride shares, and carpools. I don't believe that Grand Army Plaza will be car free, especially since cars utilize GAP to get to and from wherever they have to go.
While I'm no fan of closing GAP to cars, I do agree on placing bus lanes along Flatbush Ave. Flatbush Ave isn't Broadway in Manhattan, in which Broadway is actually a tourist attraction, while Flatbush Ave is like Broad St in Philadelphia, Woodward Ave in Detroit, Michigan Ave in Chicago, and New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia Aves in DC in that those arteries serve to circulate all traffic into their respective downtowns, whether you like car traffic, or not.
You can reduce the amount of lanes, which is fine, but completely removing all car lanes from those streets is a pipe dream. The automobile will change and if there's a wheel-less hovering car, so be it, but automobiles will stay in the conscious of the America mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
It's encouraging to see that they are finally getting serious about this. That said I really don't understand how they think they are going to accomplish this as the IRT & BMT subway tunnels would likely make it impossible to put the sections of Eastern Pkwy, Flatbush or Vandy that run through the plaza oval in a short tunnel. And if you can't do that, if you can't physically grade separate the heavy traffic arterialss that funnel through the plaza, how are you going to accomplish pedestrianization? And shifting those streets to the outside perimeter accomplishes nothing in regards to pedestrian safety or experience and woukd make residents heads explode.
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Another unrealistic pipe dream, at the most! Even if you was able to combine Flatbush Ave, Eastern Pkwy, & Vanderbilt (what's Vandy?) Ave into one seamless tunnel, do you know how much money that's going to take just to build an underground tunnel, as well as maybe rerouting the IRT & BMT tunnels & replacing the Grand Army Plaza IRT station?
It's way too much to do all that and the price tag would be in the hundreds of billions and it would be shot down in the NYC Council just because of the expense alone.
I'd rather reduce the amount of car lanes than completely close off GAP to auto traffic. Like it or not, the car traffic does give GAP some life and some personality. I say this as a former Brooklynite. I'd rather look into adding bus lanes on Flatbush Ave than a superfluous pipe dream such as closing GAP to auto traffic.