After rumors and review, the city officially announced that the Thanksgiving Day Parade will no longer go down Broadway below 59th Street but will head down 7th Avenue and then 6th Avenue before hitting Herald Square. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With more space available, the new route will be better for parade watchers, who come from New York and from all over the world, and better for the businesses that benefit from the activity generated by the parade. We expect this year's parade to be bigger and better than ever before."
One of the motivations is the pedestrian-only zone around Times Square (which goes into effect this May), but the bigger impetus is that Broadway is simply too narrow at certain points. After parade watchers were injured (by M&M balloons!) in 2005, a new safety protocol recommended avenue width of 62 feet; (Broadway is only 39 feet wide where the accident occurred, while 6th and 7th Avenues are wider) . Transportation Commissioner Jeanette Sadik-Khan said, "The new route will greatly expand the viewing space from what are literally the best front-row seats for the parade: the sidewalks of Manhattan."
The new route still starts at West 77th Street and goes down Central Park West; at 59th Street, the parade will head east on Central Park South for a block and then turns down 7th Avenue. At West 42nd Street/Times Square, the parade moves east again for a block and then turns down 6th Avenue. At West 34th Street/Herald Square, the parade will turn west and travel along West 34th until 7th Avenue. While hotels along Broadway will take a hit, this opens up opportunities for hotels along 6th and 7th Avenues.
