There is a seven lane highway on Manhattan’s East Side – no, not the F.D.R. – and a group of New Yorkers is taking action to reimagine it. The New Third Avenue Boulevard group is aiming to create a first-of-its-kind thoroughfare along Third Avenue from East 23rd Street to East 42nd Street.
The group’s plan calls for extended sidewalks, double bus lanes, double bike lanes and set areas for outdoor dining. As for motorists, all of these improvements are accomplished while still maintaining two lanes of vehicular traffic.
These features would replace a notoriously unfriendly stretch of road along a bustling, bar- and restaurant-rich corridor through Midtown.
At present, Third Avenue carries five lanes of northbound vehicular traffic and two lanes of car parking.
Among the leaders of the effort are Barak Friedman, a Third Avenue resident who also volunteers with the non-profit organization Transportation Alternatives, and Paul Krikler, an investment banker and avid cyclist.
The problems with Third Avenue had been apparent for years, Friedman and Krikler said, but the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing Open Streets, outdoor dining expansion and bike boom pushed the pair to action.
“Corona [COVID-19] brought a lot to light, but it was already there to start with,” Friedman said. Friedman pointed to the 2010s-era bike and bus upgrades to First, Second and Madison Avenues, as well as the various proposals for busways on Fifth Avenue.
In addition to a burgeoning bar and restaurant scene, Third Avenue is home to noisy car traffic, slow rides on the M101, M102 and M103 buses, and some of the most treacherous cycling on Manhattan’s East Side. Photo by Stephen Zubrycky.
Third Avenue’s narrow sidewalks, slow buses, perilous cycling and deafening traffic noise represented a “glaring omission” from the city, Friedman said.
Krikler looked abroad and saw the massive bike infrastructure expansions in cities like Paris, where about 400 miles of bikeways are in the works.
“We both assumed we were about to get the same treatment in New York,” Krikler said. But that treatment was not going to come on its own. “The City gave us no choice [but to pursue this] because of their inaction.”
The New Third Avenue Boulevard group has found some early success since its founding in Spring 2021. Its petition had over 400 signatures as of October 2021, and the group has found little resistance while canvassing among the neighborhood’s residents and businesses. The plan was also featured in Streetsblog NYC.
The group has also spoken with and gotten generally positive feedback from such local leaders as Manhattan Borough President-elect Mark D. Levine, New York City Department of Transportation Manhattan Borough Commissioner Edward Pincar Jr., and a number of City Council members.
Since the pandemic began last year, New York has dabbled in more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly streets. Programs like Open Streets, Open Restaurants, and Bike Boulevards are examples of this paradigm shift.
A busy pedestrian corridor, Third Avenue’s sidewalks are narrow with many choke points. Photo by Stephen Zubrycky.
But the Third Avenue proposal is a far more ambitious and capital-intensive initiative than any of these pandemic programs. It’s more in the mold of NYCDOT’s Broadway Vision, which aims to reconstruct Broadway from Columbus Circle to Union Square, and is NYCDOT’s most daring act of placemaking to date. A tiny slice of this plan, a two-block “shared street” just south of Madison Square Park, opened last month.
“Within our own city, there are amazing things being done,” Friedman said, referencing the Broadway improvements. “New York City is a stage for the rest of the country… we need to be innovative.”
New York needs more ambitious, pragmatic plans like the New Third Avenue Boulevard. If congestion pricing is to become reality, and if it is to work as intended and reduce traffic, the city is going to have more transit demand and a lot of formerly-car-only spaces it can start really utilizing.
The New Third Avenue Boulevard is a good starting point, not only for supporting bus transit, but for transforming those spaces into places.