Cars Were Banned on 14th Street. The Apocalypse Did Not Come.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/14th-street-cars-banned.html

Version 0 of 1.

Recently, I wandered around the vicinity of 14th Street and encountered a quiet that was almost eerie. I was unnervingly reminded of the days after 9/11, when cars were prohibited from making their way downtown. No one going to Cafe Cluny (on the corner of West 12th and West Fourth Streets) would have heard a single honking horn.

The relative silence was the result of the city’s recent decision to ban most cars from 14th Street. As transportation analysts had predicted all along, traffic doesn’t necessarily reroute itself when cars are pulled off certain roads. It almost starts to disappear.

Given how hard it is to make any changes to the flow of movement in New York, this was an accomplishment along the order of Stonehenge. The impetus was to provide faster and more efficient bus service. But nearly as soon as the plan was announced, antagonists rallied themselves. In June an organization of block associations in downtown Manhattan — usually a locus of animosity toward Kochs and Trumps and carbon emissions — challenged the initiative.

In a lawsuit filed against the Department of Transportation, the group claimed that the elimination of cars between Third and Ninth avenues represented “arbitrary and capricious actions by government” that threaten the “well-being of residents of the Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Flatiron communities.”

What was at stake was the potential destruction of the area’s “character.’’ The peace would be disrupted, the residents of $20 million townhouses unsettled. The vehicles denied access to 14th Street would inevitably snake their way through adjacent roads, more intimate and precious, bringing with them fumes and commotion.

All of this pollution had been absorbed by 14th Street for years. But no one ever went to court on behalf of the men and women who line up in front of the Salvation Army on Tuesday morning, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, for free meals that many of them eat on the sidewalk.

Plaintiffs twice succeeded in getting the Transportation Department to delay its plans. Then, in late September a panel of state appellate judges allowed the experiment to go forward. The result has been a span of several days with buses traveling on 14th Street — a thoroughfare of discounts and hustle — accompanied only by delivery trucks, emergency vehicles and cabs, which can pick up and drop people off but must make the first available turn. (Drivers who violate this rule receive tickets.)

So how has this all played out? As a phenomenal success.

Initial data indicate that the buses, previously some of the slowest in the city but now, free of so much competition, have become much faster. An M14 bus trip that typically took 30 minutes now is taking about 21 minutes. One morning this week, a bus was so ahead of schedule that it had to stop at an intersection and pass the time so it wouldn’t get too ahead of itself.

The greatest disincentive to getting on a bus in New York is the prospect of waiting so long for it, followed then by the reality, once you are on the bus, that you could have gone to Connecticut in the time it will take to get from the far reaches of the East Side to Lincoln Center. The more reliable buses are, the more popular they should become.

That cars don’t necessarily clog neighboring streets when major crossways are closed off seems counterintuitive. But just as you might avoid leaving town on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving because you assume everyone else is headed out, you are less likely to drive someplace where new restrictions will theoretically mean excess traffic. The fear is diversion, but the result is deterrence.

What seems to be happening on 14th Street so far is an inversion of what economists call “induced demand.’’ Time and time again it has been shown that when new roads are built or widened to reduce congestion, more drivers simply appear to take advantage of the added space.

The city’s pilot program is set to last 18 months. If it is successful, which it seems to be at a very preliminary stage, the template will be set for similar changes to be made on other major crosstown streets. Imagine 42nd Street without traffic.

A few days after the program began, one neighborhood group posted images on Twitter showing how few cars were around even during late-afternoon rush hour. The West 13th Street Alliance (which wasn’t involved in legal challenges to the city’s plan) noted that there were actually fewer cars on the stretch of West 13th Street between Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue than before the program had begun.

“We are not seeing apocalyptic gridlock,’’ as the city’s transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, drolly put it to me.

The question of whether New York, or at least Manhattan, could ever largely rid itself of cars is one that has not yet gotten the traction it deserves. At the same time, it seems less inconceivable than it might have five or 10 years ago.

The city has closed off portions of major streets and turned them into plazas with bistro tables. The conversation around shutting down the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights to accommodate repairs to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway has been broadened to one about reducing traffic on the B.Q.E.

The children marching for solutions to climate change are not wishing for a new car when they turn 16. They are hoping to see far fewer of them on the street.