New York City can finally have a 42nd Street that welcomes pedestrians with space, greenery, and amenities, combined with speedy and efficient river-to-river travel, via.... New York City can finally have a 42nd Street that welcomes pedestrians with space, greenery, and amenities, combined with speedy and efficient river-to-river travel, via a modern, at-grade, low-floor light rail line. This can be a reality within four short years with the adoption of vision42--an auto-free, light rail boulevard.

New York is unique among American cities in its size and extraordinary diversity. It remains a city scaled for pedestrians, while most other urban environments on our continent have been redesigned for cars. The vitality and intensity of New York derive in large part from this very human scale of circulation and activity. Public transportation is used in far greater numbers in New York than in any other American city; some 85 percent of daily commuters to midtown Manhattan arrive there by train, bus, or ferry, and most proceed to their ultimate destination on foot or by local transit.

And yet, very little has been done over the past half century to improve our city's environment for either walking or surface transit. Forty-second Street--where half a million pedestrians come every day, and where pedestrians outnumber motorists by at least 5 to 1--is an excellent place to start!

Or so says Vision 42, a New York City citizens group pushing one of the best ideas heard in the Big Apple in decades. Read more at www.vision42.org.