As seen in a photograph from last year, Park Avenue sans motor traffic provides a bounty of recreational space.As seen in a photograph from last year, Park Avenue sans motor traffic provides a bounty of recreational space.After a COVID-canceled summer in 2020, and a truncated two-day reboot last year, Manhattan's glorious, vehicle-free Summer Streets program is back with a newly expanded route this year, taking over eight miles of Manhattan on August 6th, 13th, and 20th.
Bicycles are among the many recreational and fitness amenities accommodated by the Summer Streets program.From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m, on three consecutive Saturdays, no vehicles are allowed on the continuous eight-mile route up and down the East Side of Manhattan. All parked cars are removed as well, giving plenty of space, at least for six hours, for riding bikes, scooting, running, playing, skating, strolling, bumping into neighbors and friends, taking photos and having a blast.
Of course, Summer Streets flows both ways, north and south — to ease congestion at a perennial bottleneck on Lafayette, there's even a new "SoHo detour" this year, with uptown "traffic" running for one block on Cleveland Place around Petrosino Square — and true heads ride the entire route up and down, or down and up.arrow
And this is how a city dies.