A potential “6 ½ Avenue” might become pedestrians’ saving grace

Some peo­ple who work and live in Mid­town are aware of the pub­lic arcades that run from West 51st to West 57th Streets between 6th and 7th Avenues and are even more aware of the risks they take every time they jay­walk across these streets to hop from one arcade to another. These havens tucked away from the busy Avenues are pop­u­lar for busi­ness­peo­ple that tra­verse the area dur­ing their lunch breaks.

For those who are not famil­iar, these pri­vately owned pub­lic spaces, or POPS, are the prod­uct of New York’s 1961 zon­ing law that allowed devel­op­ers to build taller build­ings in exchange for pro­vid­ing and main­tain­ing a pub­lic space. They are often hid­den by small sig­nage, trucks parked in front of their entrances, or the fact that some of them look noth­ing like pub­lic spaces. For exam­ple, the link between West 56th and 57th Streets is a nar­row arcade through Le Parker Meri­dien Hotel. This two-story lobby is clad in pol­ished mar­ble, rich vel­vet cur­tains, and topped off with chic chan­de­liers. No unsus­pect­ing pedes­trian would guess to step foot into the space to escape the  chaotic crowds of 6th and 7th Avenues.

A pro­posal by Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion would save some New York­ers from their daily dose of brazen jay­walk­ing along the arcade path, dubbed “6 ½ Ave,” and increase the public’s aware­ness of this pedestrian-only route.

DOT iden­ti­fied key prob­lems of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as dis­con­nected pub­lic spaces, the lack of cross­walks, and parked vehi­cles obstruct­ing the vis­i­bil­ity of both pedes­tri­ans and dri­vers. They reported that an aver­age of 10 or fewer vehi­cles travel the blocks each minute dur­ing peak times, whereas 1,000 pedes­tri­ans cross these same streets dur­ing a typ­i­cal lunch hour. Accord­ing to their pro­posal, DOT has devel­oped a plan to con­nect the mid­town arcades by installing stop signs, cross­walks, and pedestrians-only wait­ing areas. This would unite the arcades into an offi­cial (and safe) pedes­trian path. Open­ing up this pas­sage­way would improve the city’s pedes­trian flow in Mid­town as well as the pos­si­bil­ity for future mid-block routes. Wouldn’t we all like to escape city crowds from time to time?

Photo: NYC Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion.