Traffic-restricted streets were a major Covid-era intervention in U.S. cities. A year later, some are making these programs permanent; others are more eager to push the barriers aside.
By John Surico
The early set-up shift for my local “Open Street” in western Queens starts at 8 a.m. on weekends. That’s when neighborhood volunteers drag the metal barricades, some adorned with signs, banners or decorations, into the streets from the curb.
“The key is to place them in specific spots,” said Evie Hantzopoulos, a neighbor and local advocate (and city council candidate), as we heaved them over together. She demonstrated her tactics as we shared a shift one morning: barricades placed on the right of the avenue, so drivers making a left had to pull all the way over; or just a few feet apart, so cars had to slow down, if only out of caution for their mirrors.
Drivers glared at us as we worked; inside his vehicle, one man could be seen cursing in frustration.
“If you don’t get shouted out, it’s not a true shift,” Hantzopoulos said.
Hantzopoulos and other volunteers have been running this Open Street for nearly a year. It is just one of the 67 miles of reduced-traffic streets in New York City created in the spring of 2020, when the city was the world’s pandemic epicenter. Many other U.S. cities did the same, rolling out similar initiatives in response to the sudden need for more outdoor space during the first phase of the coronavirus crisis. Billed variously as “Open, “Slow,” “Safe,” or “Shared” streets, the idea — erecting temporary traffic-limiting barriers on urban roadways to quickly prop up public space for people who had little — was simple yet bold in a country where motor vehicles still dominate.
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