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New York City has opened 23 more miles of streets to pedestrians across the five boroughs, for a total of 67 miles we can run, bike and play on.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the newest set of open streets during his press briefing on Wednesday, saying that the city will continue to add to it and connect the open streets with restaurants doing outdoor dining.
"We'll have more to say on that in the next few days," he added.
The following streets are now open to play on:
- Laconia's Yates Avenue
- Concourse's McClellan Street and Cromwell Avenue
- Sheepshead Bay's Bragg Street
- Midwood's Avenue K
- Crown Heights' Schenectady Avenue
- East New York's Stanley Avenue
- New Lots' Blake Avenue
- Prospect Heights' Carlton Avenue
- Woodside's 60th Street
- Chelsea's 25th Street
- Hell's Kitchen's 44th Street
- Brownsville's Blake and Livonia avenues
- Bushwick's Humboldt and Moore streets
- Harlem's 129th Street
- Claremont's Washington Avenue
- Castle Hill's Randall Avenue
- Morris Heights' Nelson Avenue
- East Bronx's Holland Avenue
- Longwood's Louis Nine Boulevard
- Kingsbridge's Tibbett Avenue
- Morrisania's Trinity Avenue
- Crotona's Crotona Parkway
Almost 10 miles of the new open streets will be managed by local precincts while business improvement districts will oversee 3.15 miles. A little more than a mile of roads adjacent to parks will be opened as well as 9 miles of protected bike lanes will be added, the mayor said.
You can check out exactly where these streets are on the city's interactive map below:
You can also see all open streets on Google Maps, which will help people find them when they go out and help drivers stay clear of them.
These streets are part of the nearly 100 miles the city plans to close to traffic over the course of the shutdown, which started with 7.2 miles which included 4.5 miles within parks—Fort Tryon Park, Flushing Meadows, Forest Hill Park, Callahan-Kelly Park, Grant Park and Silver Lake Park—and 2.7 miles will be next to the city's green spaces—the Williamsbridge Oval, Court Square, Carl Schurz Park, Highbridge Park, Prospect Park, Stapleton Waterfront Park and Lt. William Tighe Triangle.
NYC was able to surpass its original target of 40 miles by the end of May.
De Blasio initially resisted the City Council's new proposal to open streets to recreation. The night before the announcement, Councilman Corey Johnson tweeted that the council would "look to @NYGovCuomo for leadership on this issue."
"The discussions with the council were kindred in the sense that we could come up with places to open—the areas around parks is a great example, whereby by opening up, you'll capture the natural flow of people," de Blasio said on Monday. "One of the most important places to open are where people are going anyway, to give them more space since more and more people will go there when it gets warmer. We'll focus on where the need is greatest and the communities are most effected."
Johnson praised the plan but advocated for more on Twitter:
"This is a good step forward but we should be thinking even bigger. The @NYCCouncil will keep pushing for more open streets and better transit infrastructure during and after this pandemic."
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