The Open Streets program was supposed to be an innovative approach to address inequities around outdoor access.
New York City’s streets are narrow — and often inaccessible for pedestrians or bikers, particularly in less wealthy neighborhoods. When the pandemic rendered social distancing a necessity, former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the Open Streets program as a promising solution: creating car-free zones to give pedestrians and cyclists more space. The program, first launched in Spring 2020, did add onto existing bike routes and became permanent the following year in May 2021.
But the program seemed to fall short of its promises. A report by transportation non-profitTransportation Alternatives found in October 2021 that only 46% of the city’s Open Streets — equating to 24 miles — were actually working in 2021. Only 20% New Yorkers lived within walking distance of an Open Street, the report found.
There were also disparities in which Open Streets were functioning: those in predominantly white neighborhoods were more likely to be active. There are only 20 Open Street locations in the Bronx, equating to 7 streets per million residents. In Manhattan, there are 214 Open Streets - or 68 streets per million residents, nearly 10 times more than the Bronx, according to an analysis of NYC Open Data's Open Streets locations dataset.
Even though the program might not have been successful so far, it is definitely still around and worth keeping an eye on. The Department of Transportation is currently accepting Open Streets applications for 2022, so there may be new streets and hopefully, new improvements to the program soon.
All code, data and shapefiles for this project are available on GitHub.
