By: Justin Credible
Mayor Bill de Blasio, during a radio interview last Friday, announced that a pedestrian zone would be created around Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall by temporarily closing all or part of several blocks to traffic at certain hours, starting the day after Thanksgiving and ending in January, the N.Y Times reported.
Both the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the N.Y Fire Department are objecting to this plan.
Every year millions upon millions of tourists come to this area to see the giant Rockefeller Christmas tree and watch the world-famous Radio City Rockettes.
“The move to increase ‘pedestrian space’ surrounding Rockefeller Center is misguided and makes this city less safe — plain and simple,” said FDNY union president Gerard Fitzgerald in a statement. “As it is, traffic is interfering with our firefighters’ abilities to reach the scene of a fire, but this new plan will have wide-felt repercussions in the form of traffic from river to river.”
Fitzgerald said the closures — scheduled for 49th and 50th streets between Fifth and Sixth avenues from 2 p.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday, 1 p.m. to midnight on Friday and 10 a.m. to midnight on the weekends — will interfere with emergency vehicle traffic and will prohibit smoke eaters and other first responders from reaching emergency scenes, The N.Y Post reported.
“We are disappointed that the plan put forward by the mayor gives no priority to M.T.A. buses and ignores the needs of bus customers,” Andy Byford, who oversees buses for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told the N.Y times. He added that the “unilateral decision flies in the face of the work that the M.T.A. has done” with city transportation officials to speed up bus times and increase ridership. M.T.A. officials said they were not consulted about the plan, which city officials disputed.
Meanwhile NYC Streets-Blog reported that a mayoral spokesman quickly rebuked Byford’s claim, saying that City Hall had been in weeks-long discussions with MTA bigwigs and their last-minute suggestion to better accommodate the buses would actually have eliminated pedestrian space since it would require carving out room for bus stops on the expanded sidewalk.
The spokesman, William Baskin-Gertwitz added that diverting bus service on those blocks during the holiday season is nothing new since the city has been doing it for years.
“We’ve discussed this plan with them numerous times over the last few weeks and only in the 11th hour did they raise the idea of a dedicated bus lane,” Baskin-Gerwitz told Streetsblog on Friday at 3:34 p.m. “Unfortunately, the MTA’s proposal would have reduced pedestrian space — the exact opposite of our shared goal.”
Fifth Avenue, a one-way street heading south, has four traffic lanes, including two that are dedicated to the 1,300 express and local buses that run every weekday. The city’s plan would close one of those bus lanes, forcing buses into the one remaining lane and slowing down even more buses that already crawl along during the holidays, according to The NY Times.
In addition, parts of 49th and 50th Streets that are used by a crosstown bus route would be closed for the pedestrian zone, requiring dozens of buses to be reroute, the NY Times discovered.
