#NYC pulls plug on Open Streets program near Prospect Park

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People on Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
Paul Martinka

With little ceremony, City Hall announced Friday it is nixing two Brooklyn thoroughfares that border the borough’s landmark Prospect Park from the popular Open Streets program.

The move will again allow cars on Prospect Park West from Garfield to Third streets and on Parkside Avenue from Park Circle to Ocean Avenue.

Those stretches had been converted for pedestrian and bike use during the daytime following a chorus of complaints that crowding on Prospect Park’s paved loop and walking trails made social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic difficult.

The two stretches were among eight axed from the pedestrianization program and reopened to traffic. The others include:

• Brooklyn’s East 7th Street from Canton Street to Ditmas Avenue;
• The Bronx’s Louis Nine Boulevard from Intervale Avenue to Southern Boulevard
• Manhattan’s East 29th Street from Broadway to Madison Avenue
• Queens’s Center Boulevard from 57th to Borden avenues, 27th Street from 43rd Avenue to Queens Plaza North and 85th street from 25th to 30th avenues.

The de Blasio administration chalked up the move to low utilization along those corridors but acknowledged that the Transportation Department had no formalized methodology to track how heavily the segments were being used.

City Hall also claimed it consulted local elected officials and community leaders, but did not identify any in response to queries from The Post.

All told, the Transportation program nixed 2.8 miles of street from the program — as it announced plans to add 1.7 miles of street to the program across all five boroughs.

“Every new program offers chances to track progress and establish best practices. Our Open Streets program is the biggest and farthest-reaching in the country, and removing a few streets that haven’t been heavily used – while continuing to add more in other parts of the city – won’t change that,” said Hizzoner’s spokesman, Mitch Schwartz.