Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that he would consider removing thepedestrian plazas from Times Square in a bid to restore order in the crowded streets of the Manhattan crossroads.
The move, which the mayor described as one of several options to be considered by a task force of New York City officials, would undo a signature accomplishment of Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose decision to close part of Times Square to vehicular traffic has been hailed as an influential innovation in urban design.
The plazas, which replaced portions of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, are popular with tourists, theatergoers and Midtown office workers.
But conditions in Times Square have recently come under scrutiny, with some New Yorkers complaining about the proliferation of street performers — including, most notably, topless womenwearing body paint — who are said to be accosting pedestrians for tips for posing for photographs.
Mr. de Blasio has been keen to demonstrate that he is addressing the concerns, and on Thursday he announced a task force to consider ideas on how to better prevent activities that the city deems illegal or harmful to the area’s quality of life.
But the mayor, at a news conference in Queens, surprised many urban planners when he said he would give “a fresh look” to whether the pedestrian plazas should remain.
“That’s a very big endeavor, and like every other option comes with pros and cons,” Mr. de Blasio said of removing the plazas. “So we’re going to look at what those pros and cons would be. You could argue that those plazas have had some very positive impacts. You could also argue they come with a lot of problems.”
Police Commissioner William J. Bratton had stronger, more critical words about the plazas in a separate interview on Thursday.
“I’d prefer to just dig the whole damn thing up and put it back the way it was,” Mr. Bratton said in an interview with the radio station 1010 WINS.
The mayor’s comments, reported on social media, immediately rippled around the city’s transportation world.
“I’m, like, reeling right now,” said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for pedestrian and cycling safety. He added that he was struggling to make sense of the mayor’s remarks.
The comments were particularly vexing, Mr. White suggested, because the plazas have been widely credited with improving pedestrian safety in the neighborhood. Mr. de Blasio has made improving traffic safety a hallmark of his administration.
“It was one of the most dangerous places in the city to walk because you were literally forced into the roadbed,” Mr. White said of the old layout of Times Square. “There’s challenges with hustlers and so forth, but that’s no reason to expose pedestrians to the danger that we had before.”
As a candidate for mayor, Mr. de Blasio said he had “profoundly mixed feelings” about the plazas, referring to himself as “a motorist” and saying he was often frustrated by their effect on automobile traffic.
“For me,” he said at a debate in 2013, “the jury’s out.”
