Feet in the "Park" is not the same as "Summer Streets"

The point of "Summer Streets" in New York City is to demonstrate the concept of streets as places, that neighborhoods and commercial districts can be better experienced without a focus on automobility. In NYC, to "celebrate" this idea, they close streets in highly used areas to automobile traffic. (They already close streets in parks like Prospect Park in Brooklyn. In DC, the National Park Service does this in Rock Creek Park on weekends.) See "No Traffic on a Saturday? Well, No Cars, Anyway" and "Putting the Park in Park Avenue" from the New York Times.

That's the same thing done in Bogota, where the idea, the Ciclovia, was originally inaugurated.

So what's the plan in DC?

To hold "summer streets" called "Feet in the Street" in a park, miles and miles away from the core of the city.

See the press release, "District to Hold First-Ever “Feet in the Street” Event" -- Car Free Celebration in Fort Dupont Park on Saturday, August 29."

In this article from Mass Transit Magazine, "Building Multimodal Transit Facilities," they include a graphic showing the difference between conventional and sustainable urban transportation planning.

In a sustainable urban transportation paradigm, the foundational principle is that walking, transit, and to some extent bicycling, can and "should" be the part of normal everyday behavior and action.

I call this "transit as a way of life," as opposed to it being something special or something you do "just to go to work." Feet first is a good way to put it, but on the streets and sidewalks of the city, not off in some distant park.

Having a "summer streets" program in a park defeats this idea. It's a park activity, not a closing of streets to celebrate walking, bicycling, and nonautomobility. Call it for what it is.

Making people go to a park miles away from where they live to participate reinforces the car culture belief that walking and bicycling is recreational, something that requires special effort in a place far from where you ordinarily live or work, to partake.

Savannah might understand this a little better than DC.