Cars needs to avoid NYC’s restaurant row

by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

Photo credit: Huy Phan

An op-ed on the Streetsblog website argues that New York City’s Restaurant Row — the block of West 46th Street between Eighth and Night Avenues — needs to be pedestrianized. Mike Gagliardi’s essay is titled, “Restaurant Row: Cars Need to Go,” but as I note in my blog post title, he really wants cars not to go on the narrow urban street.

For some reason, this block is home to many restaurants, including one more than 100 years old. New York City has an Open Streets program, which has been shown to be good for business. Gagliardi’s op-ed quotes managers of the restaurants who support pedestrianization of the street, as well as patrons who would prefer the quiet and cleaner air of a pedestrianized street. The Open Streets program is an issue in the city’s current mayoral election, with one candidate promising to expand the program and another non-committal about it.

Banning cars from streets is common in many cities in Europe — Paris, London and Dublin among them — with many benefits for pedestrians and for the businesses on those streets.


We hope the efforts to ban cars from NYC’s Restaurant Row will be successful.

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