Summer Streets Is Over. Long Live Summer Streets!

2790342224_70d439cdc1_o.jpg

Powered by thousands of New Yorkers hungry for car-free public space and aided by three consecutive weeks of picture perfect weather, there can be little doubt that the Summer Streets experiment was by most measures a rousing success. Still, the New York Times reports that the city will "study the effect on businesses closely" before deciding how, or if, it will continue with the program, and the question of how best to accommodate all human-powered modes remains an open one.

With that in mind, consider this an open thread — a Summer Streets epilogue. What was your favorite aspect of the inaugural season? Least favorite? Should the program be expanded with new routes, days, or hours? Should there be separate Summer Streets for fitness-minded cyclists, inline skaters and runners? Assuming it carries on with the program, what can the Bloomberg administration do to ensure its survival under the next mayor?

In short, what is the ideal future Summer Street?

Photo: acsweet/Flickr

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

It’s Past Time to Make Summer Streets Even Greater

|
When Summer Streets launched in 2008, it was accompanied by a veritable New York media firestorm. “Will Car-Free ‘Summer Streets’ Work?” asked the Times. “Businesses Brace for Summer Streets,” warned WNYC. Seven years on, New York’s marquee car-free event has become a popular August institution. It’s time for more. Since its first edition, Summer Streets has […]

Summer Streets 2016 Gets Started Tomorrow

|
If you’re old enough to remember when Summer Streets — which begins tomorrow — was a wild new idea, it probably won’t surprise you that this isn’t the first year we’ve pointed out that Summer Streets has become a completely normal thing. For some time now, New Yorkers have wondered when DOT would improve on the city’s premier car-free event, and next […]

Why Is Summer Streets So Rare?

|
The forecast for Saturday is bleak — 100 percent chance of rain, lasting just about all day. Tomorrow also happens to be the first Summer Streets event of 2014 (as well as the first during the de Blasio mayoralty). Good thing the main attraction is in a tunnel. But since there are only two other […]