The city is selling its streets.
The Department of Transportation recently unveiled a shocking rule change that would privatize its already-controversial “Open Streets” program by allowing restaurants and other businesses to operate on roadways and public spaces at roughly 200 locations.
The rule would also apply to 74 city-designated “public plazas” — including a 12-block-long stretch of Broadway in Times Square and Willoughby Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn.
The rule would allow concession agreements with the businesses, and the city would use politically-connected nonprofits, civic groups and quasi-government agencies as “partners” overseeing these sites.
These partners — which include the North Brooklyn Open Streets Community Coalition and Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance — would choose the concessionaires, who’d be handed control of as much as half the space of each car-free area.
The DOT has yet to iron out how much outdoor seating restaurants and other concessionaires will be able to offer.
“Let me get this straight: the Bicycle Bolsheviks at DOT reclaimed the streets for The People, in order to turn them over to…Capitalists?!” said NYC Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola (R-Queens), upon learning of the rule change.
“I don’t recall reading that in the Communist Manifesto. I guess [the] Open Streets [program is] just open for business. What a bunch of car-hating hypocrites.”
Most Open Street sites are usually a single block barricaded from traffic except emergency vehicles, but some are much larger, including a 26-block strip of 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, the city renamed “Paseo Park.”
Many are near or smack in the middle of residential neighborhoods like Jackson Heights that lack parkland, supporters say.
But many drivers hate the programs, saying it creates more traffic.
Street closures also make it difficult for first responders to deal with emergency calls and are a huge problem for elderly pedestrians and the disabled to navigate, critics have said.
Shannon Phipps, a Brooklyn activist and founder of the Berry Street Alliance, blasted the rule change as a brazen attempt at “monetizing and profiting for the network of private entities tied to the lobbyists and politicians” pushing an anti-car agenda on New Yorkers.
“It is disingenuous; it’s classic bait-and-switch,” said Phipps, a staunch critic of a massive “Open Streets” site stretching 1.3 miles along Berry Street in Williamsburg.
“Our biggest concern is the conversion of Open Streets into entertainment and commercial spaces, and the negative impacts of living within close proximity of these sites. This rule clearly shifts the primary purpose of Open Streets to profit over people, [and] entertainment and drawing crowds. A fresh kind of hell, especially on weekends.”
The city is currently fending off a pending federal lawsuit alleging the program discriminates against people with disabilities who rely on vehicles to travel.
Jackson Heights activist Kathy Farren, 71, said she’s considering moving because the street closures along 34th Avenue have made it difficult for her husband, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, to get around. Farren predicted “the rule change is only going to make” the neighborhood’s overall quality of life worse.
“The language in the new rules is vague, so there’s probably going to be no control over what goes on based off what I’ve seen in the past, so I should probably put my [co-op] up for sale now,” she said.
The Open Streets program was created in April 2020 by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio as a temporary measure to help New Yorkers gather safely outdoors during the pandemic.
The City Council made it permanent in 2021, and Mayor Eric Adams has since expanded it to roughly 200 sites as part of an agenda aimed at limiting car use.
The DOT’s pedestrian plaza program was launched in 2008 under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
DOT spokesman Vincent Barone called the agency’s plan “a small rule adjustment” that “will help bring in resources to keep DOT’s Open Street and Plazas clean, well-managed, and welcoming to all.”
“These public spaces can better support local small businesses while also providing clear paths for pedestrians, ample space for public use, and programming,” he said. He claimed there’s “no evidence to suggest the program has slowed any response times.”
