There was no room to exercise. Just dangerous. The noise from cars alone was stressful.

Now, New Yorkers would NEVER allow this to be reversed.

But back then, many people actually opposed banning cars from Central Park 🤦

It took decades of activism to kick these cars out of the park.

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[+] 74 points 9 months ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 36 points 9 months ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    De Blasio also greatly increased the number of ferries running from borough to borough.

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  • [–] 57 points 9 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 48 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Seriously… I don’t get making a post like this without even providing pictures of what it’s like now.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    Last time i was there (which was a couple years ago), the paved roads were still there, but there were no cars on them except for an occasional cop car or ambulance going at moderate speed. And iirc the painted car lanes have shrunk down to a single lane, while painted lanes for pedestrians widened and bike lanes were added

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  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    A few years ago? That looks like 2005

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    What does it look like now?

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  • [–] -1 points 9 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    So, where was the road in the vid? Bottom left?

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

    I dunno, I didn't watch the video lol.

    The park is huge by the way. It might not come across as well in an aerial photo, but it's pretty massive, especially for something in the middle of a city as large as NYC.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    If you zoom in on the bottom left, you see little dots. Like ants. Those are people lol insane

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Here in Kansas City there's a movement afoot to remove some sections of street pavement in our downtown area and replace it with a park. I'm fairly confident it'll happen too.

    Luckily there's a ton of park space throughout the city here.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago*

    I wish op posted a current picture - I missed Central Park the last few times I visited nyc.

    I don’t know if we really have similar opportunities here in the Boston areas, but we have a lot of places pedestrianizing downtowns. While we had some for many years, pandemic was a big trigger, but very few became permanent and too many were given back to cars.

    I’m especially annoyed at my town. We have a classic “Main Street” with shops and restaurants, right near a train station, commons, museum, etc. they’ve been pushing it for decades as a walkable place …. Businesses got tons of extra traffic when it was pedestrianized. They kept it for summer weekends but just stopped doing that too.

    Most residents wanted permanent, town council wanted it permanent …. But we have a strong mayor who didn’t

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    How else are Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson meant to stop Jeremy Irons emptying out the international gold reserve?

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  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago

    Running alongside traffic is the equivalent lung damage as smoking a pack of cigarettes.

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago

    That's actually amazing. Love old videos of life in motion.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    I appreciate this video and audio. It’s good to have this for archival footage so we can learn from these mistakes.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Now to get rid of the horse carriage industry that is working those poor horses to death.

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