Countless visitors make the pilgrimage to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan during the holidays to bask in the glow of the towering Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, gawk at glittering window displays, and take selfies with sidewalk Santas.

And soon New York will carve out more room for the holiday crowds in the heart of the city by taking the groundbreaking step of removing or severely limiting cars on several streets, including an iconic stretch of Fifth Avenue.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, during a radio interview on Friday, announced that a pedestrian zone would be created around Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall by temporarily closing all or part of several blocks to traffic at certain hours, starting the day after Thanksgiving and ending in January.

But the mayor’s decision immediately put the city at odds with the transit agency that runs its public buses. And the mayor, in moving the plan forward, seemed to have traded one traffic problem for another by failing to accommodate the hundreds of heavily used buses that would be slowed by the street closings.