Some day, maybe by Mayor Bloomberg’s seventh term, City Hall might find the money and smarts to landscape and accessorize Times Square’s repellent asphalt plazas so they don’t look quite so much like prison yards.
Until then, 8 million of us are likely to be stuck with the ghastly public “amenities” thrust without public review upon the Crossroads of the World. Bloomberg appears inclined to keep the butt-ugly loitering grounds, even though, as the Times reported last week, the traffic-busting scheme that was the main reason for installing them appears to have flopped.
Nobody knows for sure. Bloomberg has yet to decide. But the Department of Transportation is refusing to release data on whether or not closing Broadway from 42nd-47th streets to vehicular traffic has reduced congestion or speeded up motorists’ rides. No wonder: How could reducing the number of lanes possibly accomplish either goal? It would require a miracle transparent only to auto-averse DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
The question’s moot if Bloomberg refuses to undo the mess she made — which would require no less than giving us back the Times Square that worked very well for 100 years by restoring the old traffic pattern and getting rid of the plazas.
Yes, they’re popular with tourists on a budget and suburban day-trippers. But when did pampering them become the city’s governing principle?
Spanning five blocks that were once thrilling to stroll but are now interminable even to an insatiable walker like myself, the plazas are unsightly beyond words and patience. It isn’t for not being pretty. Lots of city landmarks possess moody, melancholy beauty without being pretty: the Coney Island el in the sun, SoHo’s cast-iron facades in the rain.
Times Square’s plazas, on the other hand, beg to be condemned as all-weather eyesores unredeemed by misterioso grunge or irony. Ineptly paved, dotted with cheap chairs and plantings unworthy of public housing, and painted purple-pink like strange planets of 1960s “Star Trek” episodes, they’re an insult to the bow-tie’s historic theaters and landmark buildings. They particularly affront the new, meticulously wrought Red Steps — a grand viewing installation from which the plazas’ gag-inducing sprawl can be grasped whole.
Making things even worse, they’re often barricaded for one dubious use or another — like last Thursday’s loud, pedestrian-blocking “prayer vigil” for Haiti featuring self-promoting speakers including much-in-the-news Rev. Floyd Flake. Isn’t that what churches and synagogues are for?
Voices quick to howl over the least perceived blemish on the urban fabric have gone mute. Where’s the outrage from esthetically attuned City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden? Or the Municipal Art Society?
The normally energetic Times Square Alliance rolled over for the DOT blitzkrieg. So have Times Square real estate kingpins, hotel operators, retailers and restaurateurs who publicly say they find the plazas just dandy, but say the opposite privately. They lie for good reason: most have business before city agencies and are loath to alienate Bloomberg’s enforcers.
Some politically correct types deplore the plazas’ appearance but can’t bring themselves to say so. They’ve bought irreversibly into Sadik-Khan’s holy calling to promote bicycle use and reduce cars on the streets — a view typically betrayed as, “Real New Yorkers don’t drive.” Of course, the full garages in every residential neighborhood from Riverdale to Brighton Beach are used only by visiting Swedes and Martians.
But one New Yorker, at least, needs to spend more time on foot: Mike Bloomberg. Only a mayor permanently locked in his limo could leave Times Square looking as forsaken as his minions have, at what was once Midtown’s most joyous walking ground.