“The pedestrian plazas have been phenomenally successful,” Bloomberg said at a Brooklyn press conference Thursday.
At Tuesday night’s debate, both Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota said they were unsure if they would keep the pedestrian plazas at Times Square and Herald Square that have closed Broadway to cars in place.
But Bloomberg said the verdict is already in on the plazas.
“It has been phenomenally successful in terms of business in the stores that face the plazas, in terms of people showing up,” he said.
“This is not a subjective thing. Just go and count the people that are in Times Square or any other pedestrian plaza and you’ll see how how successful it is,” he said, adding the plazas have also been a safety boon.
The pedestrian plazas at Herald Square are disgusting.
There is filth on the ground at the 33rd Street plaza that needs to be blasted off with NASA equipment.
The pedestrian plazas were Bloomberg's passive aggressive way of getting back at lawmakers who didn't give him his "Pay To Drive Into Manhattan" program.
Quite frankly, I would return almost all of them to vehicular traffic.
If you ever have to move anything in Manhattan, you know how insane it is to drive these days.
That's because Bloomberg took a bad situation and made it a thousand times worse.
I'm not a car guy - don't own one, don't want to.
But I hate what Bloomberg did with these pedsetrian plazas.
He's made the gridlock so much worse - and he did it petulantly because he didn't get his traffic plan.
I like some of the plaza's (never use them) but you are absolutely right- they are 100% petulant payback. Traffic is getting crazier and the city is getting more and more overcrowded. They are addicted to that real estate cash...
ReplyDeleteIt was payback when Shelly screwed him for his traffic plan. He doesn't really care about these and God knows, you'd never catch him or one of his fellow oligarchs at one. It's about putting his stamp on the city. He's like a cat that needs to spray the couch and mark it as his territory.
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