Summer Streets – Success or Dud?
by Lewis DerkinsAugust 11th, 2008, 10:42 pm
The question of how successful New York’s Summer Streets was this weekend is hard to answer, and different sources give different accounts. It seems that many businesses think it was a disaster, while most pro-bicycle organizations think it was a great success.
The impact on businesses seems to depend on the type of business you run.
Mark Barbosa, manager of Manhattan Cabinetry near East 30th Street, said his sales dipped 50 to 60 percent compared to a typical Saturday.
Barbosa said most of his customers arrive by car, and while they swarmed in once vehicular traffic was permitted after 1 p.m., the rush did not compensate for the morning lull.
Food places, on the other hand, were thrilled by the spike in revenues from hungry cyclists and pedestrians.
A Subway sandwich shop down the block reported a 10 percent increase in sales, and a Guy & Gallard eatery a block away raked in an extra $500, compared to average Saturday sales.
But the overall impact of this is unclear – if food stores make substantially less than other stores, their 10% increase could be a drop in a huge bucket of economic loss compared to other businesses.
The problem is New York didn’t seem to have a very concrete way to gauge the success of this event.
How will the city assess whether the program works? Officials haven’t been all that clear on that point.
Please tell me that before we embarked on this great social experiment, we had someone sit down and figure out what “success” means.
Please tell me that “success” is defined a little more concretely than “people having fun”.
Please tell me that “success” is measured more accurately than through Mayor Bloomberg walking a block or two down the street and using his anecdotal experience to determine if he likes what he sees. I’m probably wrong – he probably also asked his buddies at Transportation Alternatives what they thought of it. I’m sure their answer was completely thorough and unbiased.
At the very least, the city should have had some plan to measure the increase or decrease in business revenues along the route and count the number of participants. That measurement effort would cost a total of about $100K tops, and it would be well worth it.
It may be great that a few thousand people were “happy,” but it’s also great if you don’t kill the businesses that make these neighborhoods so “livable” in the first place. Determining if Summer Streets will cause 25 businesses that pay $4,000 in taxes to shut down would be worth the $100K investment in metrics collection. It seems wise to know if you’re helping or hurting things.
If the New York Times is correct and there was really no plan to measure the “success” in units of measure beyond hopes and dreams, this is complete and unforgivable irresponsibility.
I looked at a lot of pictures today. (Gothamist.com has a pretty good selection – some show empty streets, some show crowded streets) In the vast majority of them, I saw no more people on the streets than I would probably have seen on an average Saturday on the sidewalks. The only difference was that people were wandering aimlessly in the streets this weekend. Hooray.
Predictably, idiotic commentary from places like Cap’ n Transit shames anyone who dares ask for something as simple as a measure of success to help determine if it would be smart for us to do this every week.
After I got home, I realized how annoyed I was by the headline and focus of Sewell Chan’s City Room post, Will Car-Free ‘Summer Streets’ Work?. Of course this is a large sum of money spent on police and planning, and a potential disruption for businesses along the route. But still, that Chan must be a hit at parties:
“Hey Sewell, guess what? Next Saturday I’m having a few friends over for some beers and conversation. What do you say?”
“I don’t know, Bob. Do you think it’ll work?”
Seriously, what kind of a question is that? Of course thousands of people came out and had a lot of fun. Does that count as “working”?
Here’s my favorite part:
Chan must just be really used to the NYC press rut where, when confronted with a new livable streets initiative, the reporter’s first response is to stick a mike in a car window, and their second is to interview a shopkeeper about lost business.
Well, when we replace tens of thousands of people in cars who are buying things with “thousands” of people on foot who aren’t buying things – we’re undermining the very fabric that your livable city is built on. Journalists are right, and in my opinion obligated, to report on these issues and question the choices of elected officials.
The verdict on Summer Streets is still out, but New Yorkers ought to be demanding to know the criteria being used to decide it.
Posted in Bicycles, Spending |
your wife wonders why you turned off your phone.
This makes me wonder about the economic loss of not building a Canal Street Bypass Tunnel — aka tunneled Lower Manhattan Expressway — because of the idea that the surface streets must remain jammed with traffic that belongs on an expressway and hence leaves little space for commerce: thanks to the grossly over-rated Jane Jacobs.
I just looked at Cap’n Transit’s page on the Shore Parkway and as a man who knows he is wrong, deletes the posts of those that disagree with him, which is apparently everyone of that comments page!
Interesting how medievalist as that are so dependent upon censorship.
[…] blog Commuter Outrage writes: “Please tell me that success is defined a little more concretely than people having […]
The reporter found a complaining cabinet maker so “the jury is out?” Not really. The turn-out was massive, people had a great time and the vast majority of businesses along the route brought in record-setting revenues. The feedback has largely been positive. Traffic impacts were minimal while public health, environmental, economic and intangible civic benefits were substantial. People in the outer boroughs are clamoring for their own Summer Streets events. Why don’t you stick to writing about the parking lot surrounding your soulless suburban Virginia apartment complex, Lewis. You have zero idea what’s going on in NYC.
lewis, i just read to the bottom of your post. i think it’s fair to say that you are a genuine know-nothing.
do you have any idea what percentage of shopping trips are made by car in lower manhattan? we’re talking somewhere between 4 and 6 percent. virtually every business in lower manhattan is oriented towards pedestrians and transit users.
even on a regular, crappy, traffic-choked weekend day, you can not find “tens of thousands” of people in cars buying things along park avenue, lafayette and center streets on a saturday. what a strawman. retail in nyc is not driven by car trips.
it is clear from reading this blog that you are a suburban virginia highway lobby axe-grinder and ideologue. why don’t you come up to nyc and check out the event for yourself and then you actually write about something based on some actual experience.
I just got the sense that Lewis was not taking much of a position on the plan, one way or the other, but was offering an antidote to the predictably cheery media reports. NYC closes streets for a variety of reasons. One example is the NYC marathon during which key streets are closed in all five boros at one point or another. The NYC marathon is a great time, pumps money into the city, but the street closures also quite clearly displace some of the less glamorous work-a-day travel and commerce that would otherwise take place on Marathon Sunday. Whether the closures make sense for that one day is debatable, probably a deabte that is won by the marathon, but having the closures more often would probably lead to a different result.
Dave -
The jury is out because I haven’t seen any hard data to support your claims of a “massive turnout”. No traffic counts, sales receipts, pictures, nothing. In the same article that found a complaining cabinet maker, they found a restaurant that had $500 extra in sales - big deal - the cabinet maker probably makes that in one sale.
So pro-bike sites think this was a big success - what a surprise. Earlier today, NY1 was running a snap poll that had more people saying they wouldn’t participate in Summer Streets than would. Streetsblog had a commenter urging people to go vote. Again, it doesn’t look like this is a clear success from where I’m sitting.
Like I said, in every picture, I didn’t see many more people than I would normally see in New York on an average Saturday minus the cars.
It’s possible that the pictures were taken before the crowds showed up, but for an event trying to promote itself as a huge success, I would find it odd if the supporters took pictures of empty streets.
I’ve been to New York enough to know what the average weekend downtown is like. I don’t have a problem with a street fair, but that’s not what you are proposing. You’re talking about doing this every weekend, and that can hurt businesses. Unless you’re sure that it isn’t having a negative effect - which you can only know by actually measuring - you shouldnt be jumping up and down to continue it. If it turns out to be a disaster, not only will the event end, but you’ll potentially wreck the livable neighborhood that you want to cherish. And those are people’s livelihoods - it’s a little callous of you to not care if a working man loses his shirt so that you can bicycle down the middle of Park Avenue.
FYI - I don’t live in some suburban Virginia parking lot. I live in a walkable community and don’t drive. I also don’t cry when someone disagrees with me - what do you care if someone is critical of Summer Streets? Provide some hard data to refute my criticsm.
Your failure to do so leads me to believe that my criticsm is valid.
Dave -
By the way, I like your email address.
If you want to see another fraud, check out this post:
http://www.commuteroutrage.com/2008/06/19/a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words/
You can see another example of fraud here:
http://www.commuteroutrage.com/2008/07/28/what-the-hell-is-transportation-alternatives-talking-about/
Nice job with propaganda. Being a New Yorker and familiar with the hard shadow pattern of the rising sun on Lafayette Street which I commute up often, I’d say the photo you put up was taken somewhere between 7 and 8 AM on one of the Summer Streets. Hardly a fair representation of the event. But oh well, this blog is all about lies anyway.
Great information! Thanks for writing this. It is an honor to participate in the discussion.