The City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) plans to reverse the flow of traffic on multiple streets in the Financial District in order to ease pedestrian and vehicular logjams expected to result from a new construction project on Broad Street, within the New York Stock Exchange security zone.
The current street grid forces northbound traffic on Broad Street to turn left on Beaver Street, and head west.
The construction project is a massive new residential tower at 45 Broad Street, which broke ground at the end of April. Because this section of Broad Street, north of Beaver Street, is within the footprint of local roads that are permanently closed to traffic (in order to prevent a truck bomb from attacking the nearby New York Stock Exchange), and because the project will necessarily draw hundreds of construction vehicles, DOT planners are concerned that the resulting gridlock will fully paralyze Lower Manhattan’s already chronically congested streets.
To address this dilemma, they plan to redraw the map of FiDi, at least in terms of the directions in which cars can drive. The most significant change will be to Beaver Street, which now flows only westbound for its entire length, between Pearl and Whitehall Streets. Under the new plan, Beaver Street will split at Broad Street, continuing to flow westward between Broad and Whitehall Street, but reversing its current direction and running eastward between Broad and Pearl Streets. This will have the effect of allowing vehicles on Broad Street to turn either right or left, rather than being forced left, as is currently the case.
Also changing direction will be Hanover Street, which currently runs southward for its three-block length, between Wall and Pearl Streets. The new plan will split Hanover, so that it runs northward for two blocks above Beaver Street, but continues as a southbound street beneath Beaver.
The plan will also create a new pedestrian crosswalk at South William Street, where none now exists.
At the same, five-way intersection, three new painted “neckdowns” will create large, safer areas for pedestrians, while also slowing vehicular traffic.
The DOT plan also envisions creating a rare diagonal pedestrian crosswalk at the trapezoidal intersection of Beaver and Broad Streets. Finally, the plan will create a new crosswalk where none currently exists, at the five-way intersection where Beaver Street, William Street, South William Street, and Hanover Square all converge. The new crosswalk will traverse South William Street. This intersection will also get traffic calming measures, such as painted “neckdowns,” which slow vehicles by restricting them to narrower lanes, while also creating larger safe spaces for pedestrians.
All of which is intended to ease the congestion that will be unleashed by construction at 45 Broad Street. Slated to top out at 1,115 feet, the new building that will shortly begin rising there will be one of the so-called “supertalls” that have come to dot the Lower Manhattan landscape in recent years. When finished, it will surpass the recently completed 30 Park Place building (which reaches 937 feet into the sky) as Downtown’s tallest residential spire. But 45 Broad Street is unlikely to hold this title for long: Two other planned projects (at 125 Greenwich Street and 80 South Street) are both being designed to rise more than 100 feet higher.