1. Transport
January 27, 2015updated 02 Aug 2021 9:15am

In pictures: New York's car-free streets

By City Monitor Staff

Barring dream sequences in big-budget Hollywood films, few of us have ever seen New York’s busy streets completely empty of cars – so today is our lucky day. From 11pm EST last night, at the mayor’s command, 6,000 miles of the city’s roads were closed to non-emergency vehicles, due to the huge snowstorm known as “Juno”. At time of writing, they’re still closed. 

The storm itself has so far been a little underwhelming – hardly the once-in-a-century blizzard we were promised – but the sight of the city’s empty streets is strikingly eerie. Here’s Times Square, which looks like the set of a disaster film (apart from the guy taking a selfie, that is):

Image: Getty.

Police cars blocked entrances to streets:

Image: Getty.

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These guys, meanwhile, took the opportunity to have a snowball fight in the middle of the street:

Image: Getty.

And the top-voted image on reddit today is this shot from above of an empty 10th avenue:

The picture’s popularity seems to show both that a high proportion of social media users live in New York, and that people quite like the idea of car-free city streets. 

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