Back Talk reader Dallasmay passed along this link to a program New York City is trying over three consecutive weeks: 7 miles of car-free streets in Manhattan. The first car-free day occurred Saturday, and the link includes a video of what the experience was like for New Yorkers (fyi, the video loads awfully slowly). But what you'll see are people walking and biking and dancing and running throughout the city — it's a pretty impressive way to introduce the city to its residents all over again.
Dallasmay forwarded this, I assume, because of our Back Talk discussion of a week ago about ways to make downtown Dallas vibrant again. One of the suggestions was to temporarily and/or permanently close down a street or two in the center city to create a place where people don't have to worry about being flattened by vehicles. A number of comments pooh-poohed the idea, but after viewing the NYC video, I think it has a lot of merit.
In fact, two thing closing downtown streets might actually accomplish: One, a lot of people not previously acquainted with DART would find out how to use the rail to get downtown, since that would be the smart way to arrive there sans vehicle. And two, I'll bet there are literally hundreds of thousands of Dallas residents who have never been out of their vehicle downtown, except to visit a courthouse or attend a game at the AAC — how supportive of improving downtown do you think they'll be if they have no idea what's down there?
And there's a final reason to do this, too: There's nothing to lose. On the weekends already, there's almost no vehicular traffic downtown. Institutionalizing a no-vehicle day, even if it's just a one-time trial, isn't going to hurt anyone or anything downtown. In fact, it can only help.
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