City Planning To Walkers: Drop Dead

The Department of City Planning accidentally revealed that New York City’s sidewalks weren’t wide enough for safe passage, in a tweet trying to demonstrate how to socially distance while you’re walkin’ here.

The bad tweet (a form of social media post that this reporter obviously knows nothing about!) was an attempt to use sidewalk geometry to show New Yorkers how to stay six feet away from each other in this era of social distancing.

Check your #physicaldistance! Use your surroundings to make sure you’re maintaining 6 feet of distance from others to help stop the spread of #covid19. Benches, tree pits and more can help you easily visualize how far you should be from the people you pass. #whatis6feet pic.twitter.com/EpH2Jn3Itc — NYCPlanning (@NYCPlanning) April 8, 2020

But the agency did so by calling attention to the fact that “most” city sidewalks are made up of five-foot by five-foot squares placed next to each other. The sidewalk shown in the example in the department’s tweets showed 10 feet of horizontal sidewalk space given over to walking in a best-case scenario, which made it next to impossible for New Yorkers to safely keep their distance from each other, as Streetsblog’s own Julianne Cuba pointed out.

ok so in other words it's impossible to maintain a 6-foot social distance if you're not the only person on the sidewalk https://t.co/l0nxhbU1Nr — Julianne Cuba (@Julcuba) April 8, 2020

Other New Yorkers decided to go out and see how much space they could find outside their apartments, and the results were less than ideal, especially when compared to how much room was given over to motor vehicles, 30 to 40 feet per street.

This is good advice, but I just measured the width of the sidewalk outside my apartment building and it's less than 5ft wide when there's a tree pit and 7ft when there isn't. So, uh, this might be a challenge https://t.co/QAmNBDGdvh — Alastair Coote (@_alastair) April 8, 2020

ahhh you beat me to it! pic.twitter.com/xB5NtkB9kI — Jarrett M (@jarkatmu) April 8, 2020

In other neighborhoods, a tape measure that was only five feet long still managed to almost stretch out across the entire sidewalk.

My measuring tape is 5 feet pic.twitter.com/XwfGrVzVlq — Julianne Cuba (@Julcuba) April 8, 2020

And in Park Slope (photo at the top of this story), two people had about two feet max between them as they passed between a tree pit and a property line.

There were sidewalks that were barely five feet wide next to parking lanes that were seven feet wide.

How wide is the parking lane? 7 feet. We could add that to our sidewalks and have a total of 11 to 12 feet devoted to people walking instead of car storage. pic.twitter.com/v8q7006swE — Doug Gordon (@BrooklynSpoke) April 8, 2020

Sidewalks were also cut down thanks to the city’s true priorities: leaving only seven feet of sidewalk space to make room for rows of trash cans that are more than two-feet wide.

In Trash City, you could take a walk, but your efforts at social distancing will be foiled by homes for garbage pic.twitter.com/hdUU2ss5H0 — Good Idea Dave (@DaveCoIon) April 8, 2020

Someone was also found a sidewalk with barely more than two and a half feet of space to walk on in one spot.

Can I please get some advice on how to socially distance using the sidewalks on my street? There clearly isn't enough room for people to walk past each other! cc @BrooklynSpoke for the inspiration https://t.co/TPmUL6xOS7 pic.twitter.com/vBIPcM2GBz — Samir Lavingia (@lavingiasa) April 8, 2020

Unless you think City Planning was trying to kneecap the very mayor who never tried to understand how to open streets for pedestrians without making it an over-policed mess, it’s a strange admission by a government agency that you’re basically never safe while walking outside.

At least until someone creates car-free zones — there’s more than enough public space in the roadway, after all.