The plan for a pedestrian mall on 34th Street has been scrapped (much to the delight of the Post's Steve Cuzzo), but now the city is proposing a new plan that's sure to have the anti-bike lane/pedestrian plaza/anything-that-isn't-more-cars crowd reeling. New plans for 34th Street would pare the street down to just two lanes for cars, one going east and one going west, and bus-only lanes on either side. Dan Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership, told the Times that he was happy about the plan, because, "It is not a good thing for Midtown retail to have a screaming four-lane roadway." We'll wait for the inevitable screed on some "new" lack of Midtown parking or whatever, but for now the Post has a new enemy: pop-up cafés.
The Department of Transportation has reportedly accepted 12 applications by Manhattan and Brooklyn restaurants to build six-foot-wide wooden platforms along curbs, which the Post complains would be "set up inches from moving traffic" in "gutters, traffic lanes and parking spots." However, the DOT will reportedly let community boards vote on the cafés, instead of "foisting" them upon communities like they did with bike lanes (which by the way, they didn't). And even though community boards will be able to veto plans for these, they're still up in arms over...the thought of having to say no? "We don't want outdoor dining or public plazas in our neighborhood!," cried Sean Sweeney of the SoHo Alliance, seemingly not realizing that they don't have to exist if the community doesn't want them to.
There's also one victim of all this that nobody ever considers: the poor, maligned texting driver. Maury Schott, chairman of the sidewalks committee argued, "If a driver happens to be texting, he could slam into a cafe at 35 to 40 mph." Given that a lack of parking and traffic bottlenecking are valid concerns, wading into the territory of the rights of scofflaw drivers succeeds only in weakening the argument against pop-up cafés. And strengthens the argument that pedestrians and bikers are second-class citizens in this city, even compared to drivers who break the law.
