OPINION: Canal Street - Not The Vendors - Is the Problem - Streetsblog New York City

"For decades, this corridor has been a civic failure: overrun by traffic, choked by fumes, lined with empty storefronts and narrow sidewalks that barely contain the daily crush of people. For decades (!), the city has studied the problems that beset Canal Street. The Department of Transportation has issued plan after plan. There have been "visioning" documents and "public engagement" sessions."

"Nothing captures that neglect more starkly than the death of May Kwok, 63, who was killed on July 19, when a reckless driver in a stolen car sped off the Manhattan Bridge, jumped a curb at Canal Streets and slammed into her on a bench. She was sitting on one of the few places to rest along the entire corridor - a street so hostile to pedestrians that even sitting down can be fatal."

"Canal is not some forgotten side street. It is a crucial east-west corridor - the spine connecting SoHo, Tribeca, and Chinatown to the bridges and tunnels that move people and goods across the city. It is also one of New York's most visible symbols of civic dysfunction: a place where transportation, design, enforcement, and community policy have all failed to meet in one coherent vision."

"I've written before about this cycle of inertia. The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives even has a specific campaign to Fix Canal. But the city has never truly faced the truth: Canal is a disaster because we've designed it to fail. Its chaos invites what economists call informal economies - the kind of small-scale, often unregulated commerce that emerges when formal systems fail to serve people's needs."

Canal Street suffers from chronic design and policy failures that produce congestion, pollution, empty storefronts, and dangerously narrow sidewalks. Multiple city studies, Department of Transportation plans, visioning documents, and public engagement sessions have produced recommendations but no substantive change. Canal functions as an essential east-west corridor linking SoHo, Tribeca, Chinatown, bridges, and tunnels while also exemplifying civic dysfunction across transportation, design, enforcement, and community policy. The street's hostility to pedestrians has had fatal consequences. The chaotic design encourages informal markets that arise to meet unmet needs, rather than reflecting vendor malice.

Read at Streetsblog