Midtown's Hectic 3rd Avenue Reimagined Under New Proposal

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — After dreaming for years about reimagining Third Avenue — a car-filled behemoth with seven lanes devoted to vehicle traffic — a group of advocates has put together a proposal to reimagine the thoroughfare with new space for pedestrians, bicyclists and restaurants.

A proposal to redesign Third Avenue between 26th and 32nd streets was presented this week to a local community board by Sam Schwartz Engineering, a firm run by the former transportation commissioner known as "Gridlock Sam."

The proposal, commissioned by Community Board 6, follows a petition launched by the group Transportation Alternatives calling on the city to redesign the boulevard as far north as 42nd Street, citing the fact that three people have been killed along the thoroughfare in the past eight years, along with 561 injuries.

The proposal, shown Monday to CB6's transportation committee, calls for reducing that stretch of Third Avenue to just two travel lanes for cars, adding 10 feet of sidewalk on each side of the street, creating a new protected bike lane and loading areas replacing the travel lanes.

Pedestrian space on Third Avenue, already narrow compared to the car lanes, has been further "pinched" in recent months by outdoor dining on sidewalks, which would be moved to the street under the Schwartz proposal.

Redesigning the avenue would ultimately be the purview of the city's Department of Transportation. The new proposal, however, seeks to "give DOT a range of possibilities to get them to act sooner on this," committee chair Gene Santoro said Monday.

"We want this to happen quickly or as quickly as possible, not in 2024," Santoro said.

The Schwartz Engineering proposal was informed by a traffic study along the six blocks in question, which found that up to 1,600 vehicles and 2,000 pedestrians pass through Thrid Avenue at East 34th Street at each day's peak hour.

Another, more conservative design from Schwartz would keep a third travel lane for cars and slightly reduce the new sidewalk space.

Board members reacted warmly to the design, with one calling it "fantastic."

Others expressed more support for the conservative option that would preserve an extra traffic lane, while some wondered whether the redesign would interfere with existing DOT projects along the avenue.

Representatives from DOT told Streetsblog that the agency was reviewing the Third Avenue petition.

Here’s @cbsix doing the planning work re: fixing 3 Avenue sooner rather than later (and paying for that work out of our discretionary budget), to give DOT a little nudge https://t.co/QKv4USuuru
— Rich Mintz (@richmintz) May 4, 2021

Amazing concept for new #ThirdAvenueBoulevard from @GridlockSam engineering at MCB6. New sidewalk expansions proposed to accommodate outdoor dining. pic.twitter.com/AIGJl9UiVc
— Car-Free Manhattan Majority (@12stTales) May 3, 2021