Have you heard of it? Well if you live in NYC and haven't, you should take part. It's organized by Transportation Alternatives, with support of the city of course. For 3 Saturdays this month the city has shut down Park Ave from 72nd all the way down to Astor Place where Lafayette is closed all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, closed to traffic, but if you want to walk, run, bike, roller blade, skateboard, or whatever else, it's wide open. Even better, traffic is only able to cross at certain streets, so you don't have to stop at every red light.
I was excited to check it out, but never thought it would be as cool as it really was. I got in a 30 mile ride with mostly open streets. Came in over the 59th Street bridge, went across 61st St to Park, then rode down to the Brooklyn Bridge, tooled around Brooklyn for a while, came back taking Park Ave back up to 72nd St, which is also closed allowing you to get to Central Park with no traffic, so I did some laps of the park before heading back to Astoria. Along the route there are 3 big rest stops with food, water, hip hop dance classes, yoga, helmet fittings, bike repair, and a bunch of other fun free stuff.
It's something that hopefully will happen again next summer, and a lot more often. You can go to http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/summerstreets/html/home/home.shtml to get more info and the schedule for next Saturday. Get out there and sign at least one of the dozen petitions for more bike lanes, more bike parking, and other things that would make cyclists and pedestrians a lot happier.
Oh, and the image above is on the part of Park that goes around Grand Central. Pretty cool.
