Join us in attendance at the unveiling event for the first annual Car Free NYC, presented by Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, District 10; Chair, Transportation Committee.
The event is being held on Wednesday, March 16, 2016 from 9:00 – 11:00 AM at NYU Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Square South, Rosenthal Pavilion – 10th Floor.
With transportation being a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the Mayor’s goal of an 80% reduction by 2050, this is an important day for New York City. The purpose is to remove all non-essential vehicles from the roads, encouraging public transportation, walking, and biking – while decreasing noise, traffic, and emissions for just one day.
When looking to leading examples we can highlight Bogotá, hosting an annual Car Free Day since 2010. More recently, this has helped to remove a striking 600,000 private vehicles for the day, from a city of about 7 million people. With high traffic rates, we see an average of 22 days per year lost due to wait times, as well as high levels of accidents and fatalities. Bogotá has taken advantage of their car free day as a platform to promote the benefits and reliability of public transportation and biking for urban transit.
In late September 2015, Paris also participated in their first Car Free Day. In order to track the results, Paris invested in Airparif to measure pollution levels throughout the city. For example, they saw a reduction of nitrogen dioxide as high as 40% in some parts of the city, with even the busiest parts of the city showing a reduction of about 20%; not to mention that noise pollution was reported to have been half of it’s status quo. This was a great feat for Paris, especially since they were only able to ban cars in about 30% of the city.
We look forward to participating in this event, and are excited to see the results of NYC’s first Car Free NYC, being held on Earth Day, April 22, 2016.