![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fa10b341cbd18fa5f1af40fca467c64242-GettyImages-2281338803.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo: Michael Nagle\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
On eight separate occasions across June and July, the city tried out something new in midtown. The crosstown corridor of 42nd Street, from First to 12th Avenue, was turned into a dedicated bus-and-shuttle corridor<\/a> \u2014 along with several smaller side streets and swaths of Fifth and Sixth Avenue, too. Streets around Penn Station were closed to vehicular traffic to accommodate crowds. And truck deliveries were banned from 30th to 60th Street, with restrictions lasting as long as 13 hours.<\/p>\n The traffic restrictions were put in place<\/a> for \u201cmatch days,\u201d when thousands of fans crossed the Hudson to watch FIFA\u2019s 2026 World Cup games at MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Sunday\u2019s final attracted some 80,000 spectators<\/a> alone. And if many of those who traveled the five miles to the Meadowlands did so by public transit \u2014 which was at least half of all visitors, since most vehicles were effectively barred from approaching the arena \u2014 chances are they passed through midtown, save for the few die-hards<\/a> who traversed the New Jersey Turnpike by foot.<\/p>\n Before the games kicked off, my colleague Christopher Bonanos hypothesized<\/a> that if all went swimmingly, this World Cup traffic experiment could be a test for future action. The Mamdani administration had already used the tournament to justify permanently widening bike lanes and sidewalks<\/a> elsewhere. Couldn\u2019t that same logic apply here?<\/p>\n Now,\u00a0the games are done, the teams have gone home, and the results are in. Let\u2019s start with a focal point: bus riders. Shuttles carried a substantial percentage of Cup-bound commuters from the Port Authority. So its gateway at 42nd Street had to move people much faster than usual; even with a bus lane, the M42 route is still one of the city\u2019s slowest, averaging roughly five miles per hour \u2014 the pace of a leisurely stroll. (Last year, it won<\/a> the Pokey \u201caward\u201d for sluggishness.) At that rate, you would\u2019ve been lucky to catch halftime.<\/p>\n But on match days, that wasn\u2019t the case. Videos<\/a> online<\/a> showed buses easily gliding through emptied lanes. A Streetsblog reporter made the journey eight minutes faster<\/a>. \u201cForty-second Street was a big success,\u201d said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group for straphangers. According to city transit officials<\/a>, travel times were about 23 percent faster than usual, even with a million more people in town for the tournament.<\/p>\n Supporters point to 14th Street as proof<\/a>: The busway, which\u00a0has restricted traffic on the thoroughfare to buses, ambulances, trucks, and cabs since 2019, has seen bus speeds<\/a> go up. Thirty-fourth Street is up next for the same treatment, after City Hall negotiated with the feds<\/a>. Trying it out on the next major link uptown after 34th seems fitting. \u201cIt should stay a busway, especially since the community support has been in place for years, even longer than 34th Street,\u201d said Pearlstein.<\/p>\n What\u2019s that again? In recent years, three Manhattan community boards \u2014 local bodies not exactly known for taking away street space from cars \u2014 have called on City Hall <\/a>to install a busway on 42nd Street. Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that pushes for safer streets citywide, has since led a campaign (\u201cMiracle on 42nd Street<\/a>\u201c) calling on City Hall to advance a redesign that includes a protected bike lane and wider sidewalks.<\/p>\n For Emily Jacobi, the group\u2019s Manhattan organizer, match days gave a glimpse of what was possible. \u201cIf you were [in midtown] during any of the games when it was running, it really felt like crystal-clear streets,\u201d Jacobi told me.<\/p>\n The Mamdani administration hasn\u2019t announced any plans for a 42nd Street busway. But the new bus blueprint<\/a> out this month from the New York City Department of Transportation identified a \u201cMidtown Crosstown\u201d almost exactly where 42nd Street is on the map as one of 50 \u201cpriority corridors\u201d where the city hopes to raise speeds by 20 percent. For the M42, that pace would equal a light jog, an improvement over the current leisurely stroll.<\/p>\n There will certainly be some pushback as with any major street redesign. In an email, Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, an organization representing the city\u2019s bars and restaurants, said several businesses \u201cexpressed frustration\u201d at the restriction on delivery trucks. He cited the inability of restaurants to receive perishables and what he described<\/a> as last-minute communication that made it hard to plan for no-truck zones \u2014 the city\u2019s plan became public<\/a> in late May, with the first match day happening two weeks later. \u201cThey knew the World Cup was coming for years,\u201d Rigie told me. \u201cThey could\u2019ve given more than a week\u2019s notice, which forced people to scramble.\u201d<\/p>\n Fred Cerullo, the president of the Grand Central Partnership, a local business group, echoed those concerns. \u201cNot a lot of outrage \u2014 everyone knew the point \u2014 but it was frustrating and really created a lot of burden to get business done.\u201d The street closures, he added, also shuttered the taxi stand outside of Grand Central, which the Partnership manages. \u201cPeople were coming out expecting to find transportation and found nothing. Not good.\u201d<\/p>\n On the ground a few days after the final, the responses were a bit more mixed. A hostess at Pershing Square, just across from Grand Central, said the bistro saw no notable difference in business. \u201cPeople mostly come right off the train, see our place, and come in,\u201d she said. Similarly, a hot-dog-cart owner farther east, in front of the New York Public Library, said he didn\u2019t notice it. \u201cPeople just grab and go here.\u201d<\/p>\n But for Kirit Prajapati, a newsstand owner at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, the traffic restrictions were a headache. \u201cOur truck drivers had to park far away and couldn\u2019t get to us,\u201d he told me. \u201cAnd if they get tickets, we\u2019re the ones who have to pay them.\u201d As we spoke, several buses struggled to turn a corner, causing a din of honking that made our conversation barely audible. Was that something worth fixing? I asked. He didn\u2019t think so. \u201cIt should go back to what it was before these bus lanes were here, which made congestion worse,\u201d Prajapati said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t broken; don\u2019t try to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n For Aaliyah Campa, the store manager of Neuhaus Chocolates, at 42nd Street and Park Avenue, the closures affected her business as well. \u201cYou stepped outside and it was a ghost town here,\u201d she said. \u201cWe definitely slowed down.\u201d<\/p>\n But what about the arrangement advocates are pushing \u2014 like 14th Street, where private cars are pushed out at each turn? Hearing that, she seemed intrigued. \u201cOh, that would be nice,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause there\u2019s way too much traffic here.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n