NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, will close some streets to car traffic, widen sidewalks and create temporary cycle lanes to give New Yorkers more room to stay away the gap outside as lockdown measures continue, the mayor said. said Monday.
FILE PHOTO: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio addresses the media while accepting 250,000 masks donated to city health workers by the United Nations to help spread the coronavirus disease (COVID- 19) at United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA, March 28, 2020. REUTERS / Andrew Kelly
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement comes just days after city officials and the mayor himself warned of a proposal to open the streets to pedestrians, saying it could not be done in full. safety in a city as dense as New York.
But at a press conference on Monday, the mayor said the city council had presented a vision to open more streets, which allayed concerns from the city’s police department.
“Over the next month, we will create at least 64 km of open streets. And as the crisis continues, the goal is to travel up to 160 kilometers, ”de Blasio said.
He said the city will focus on streets in and around the parks, where authorities expect many people to congregate as the weather warms.
Many of the 8 million people in the most populous city in the United States live in small apartments, and officials fear residents will abide by social distancing rules if longer lockdown rules continue through the summer .
De Blasio also said on Monday that the city would widen sidewalks and create more temporary cycle lanes, but did not provide further details.
The debate comes as cities around the world experiment with ways to gradually ease restrictions without compromising safety.
Several cities, including San Francisco and Denver in the United States and Milan, Dublin, Budapest and Berlin in Europe, have closed some streets to cars and widened sidewalks and cycle lanes to provide more outdoor space.
Last week, members of the New York City Council introduced a bill to dedicate 75 miles (120 km) of streets to pedestrians and cyclists by closing at least one lane to vehicles as restrictions against coronaviruses are in place.
But officials from the city’s transportation department and police department poured cold water on the proposal on Friday, saying the city did not have the resources to protect people on those streets from drivers.
In mid-April, De Blasio himself rejected the idea of closing the streets to traffic, saying he didn’t think it would work.
Asked Monday about his change of mind, he said city council had proposed community partners to help the police department keep the streets safe.
Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York; edited by Jonathan Oatis
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