Friday, August 7, 2009

Summer Streets!!!

This Saturday along with the 15th and 22nd of August, will have this Avenue up the middle of Manhattan closed to automobiles, open only to bicycles.

Full size map of closed Centre Street/4th Ave / and Park Ave, showing open cross streets here, or just check the DOT weekend traffic page.

Attention Morning Drivers! -From 7am to 1pm between the Brooklyn Bridge and 72nd Street crosstown traffic will only be allowed to cross centre street, 4th Avenue, and Park Avenue, at the following major cross streets -

• 23rd Street

• 30th Street

• 34th Streets

• 36th/37th Streets

41st, 42nd,45th Streets

(route will go over Viaduct)

• 49th/50th Streets

• 53th/54th Streets

• 57th Street

• 59th/60th Streets

• 65th/66th Streets

• 72nd Street – WESTBOUND only

• Chambers Street

• Worth Street

• Canal Street

• Broome Street

• East Houston Street

• 8th/9th Streets

• 14th Street


Also Brooklyn Bridge traffic going in to Manhattan will be directed away from Centre Street, which will cause a bigger jam at St. James Street and the Bowery in Chinatown. If you are heading north and don't need to go west, then head east on Madison Street and north on Allen Street which turns into First Avenue.


If you think traffic will be bad going crosstown, try to pick up in Battery Park and Battery Park City, where you can loop around the FDR Drive instead of going crosstown. Or you can aim to shuttle your passengers between the Upper West Side and either Times Square or the Upper East Side. The first Saturday that this was done last year it went bad, but the next two Saturdays it went smoothly. We should expect this to go relatively smoothly, much better than a parade or a race which cannot be stopped. The police let traffic across on those above streets at regularly timed intervals.


Make sure to let your fare know about the event before you start your trip, tell them your plans to avoid the traffic, and that it may take longer than usual to get to their destination.


Always check the DOT and Port Authority web-pages before your weekend shifts- Here's a few more gems-


Starting at 2pm on Saturday all the way to the morning rush on Monday, Madison avenue looks bad from 39th street to 48th:


Madison Avenue between East 39th Street and East 41st Street: One lane of traffic will be maintained from 2pm Saturday to 7am Monday to facilitate NYCDDC water main lining construction activity.

Madison Avenue between East 44th Street and East 48th Street: Two lanes of traffic will be maintained from 2pm Saturday to 7am Monday to facilitate NYCDDC water main lining construction activity.

According to the Port Authority website, the Holland Tunnel will be OPEN this weekend, you heard right, open!! do a drive by just to check if it's true.

2 comments:

  1. this was superbly written. i'm astounded. if you keep this up i am going to feel bad if i don't pass around cards with the link to every driver around me.

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  2. thanks, it's actually part of my routine anyway to check for street closures before the shift, although I did get lazy with it a for a few weeks, and just brought my computer with me with the website opened so I could quickly check as I worked.

    I feel bad still, as every guess I have to work around the problems seem to be wrong, either that or I don't even try out my own advice.

    I think that just proves the rule that nothing is expected in taxi driving, especially new york city driving, and it may just be best to go with the flow, and improvise hour to hour.

    Thanks for the compliments, I'm glad this site exists to help people, and I'm also shocked at how you manage to find redlight cameras in the bronx and east new york

    ReplyDelete