NYC Thread Time:

Summer Streets has been held every year in NYC since 2009, and 2020 would have been the 12th year. Indications are that @NYC_DOT or @NYCMayor are going to quietly let the usual dates pass without addressing it.

https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/summerstreets/html/home/home.shtml

The official website still has 2019 branding on it. They would have been planning it in March/April, and I don't know why the pandemic would have interfered with scheduled preparation.

They may have decided that these kind of events were not going to be given city permits, but one particularly striking thing about it is that it pairs along VERY WELL with the Open Streets initiative they've been pushing. So it's not like it would be unsafe or onerous!

So what is probably happening, what they expect us not to know because we didn't ask them yet, is this:

NYPD provides a large manned traffic support system for the Summer Streets event, at their insistence.

NYPD is effectively on-strike right now.

Thus the event is untenable.

This really hasn't been covered anywhere, and advocates who encourage creative use of city streets have been asking around why it wasn't explicitly cancelled if it hasn't been verified to occur on the usual August dates. To me, the omission is cowardly and shameful.

DOT knows the event is well-attended & well-loved, a civic tradition engaged similarly by cities all over the world. We really love being a last-place city controlled by the police while breathing in tailpipe emissions all summer long.

The sooner these people are out, the better