New York’s success at promoting walking and biking wasn’t achieved without friction. This is New York we’re talking about, after all, though the action-reaction sequence is so universal that it’s practically a law of transportation engineering. Step one: a pedestrian plaza is proposed. Step two: local merchants and residents object, sometimes ferociously. Step three: the street is pedestrianized. Step four: the merchants’ businesses are not destroyed, but enhanced. Step five: hardly anyone can remember what the original objections were, and even fewer of them would willingly return to the
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