Less than two months before the first day of spring, the New York City Department of Transportation has informed Open Street operators that restaurants and vendors who want to set up shop in the closed roadways will likely only be permitted for a total of 29 days this year—barely once a week for the entire spring, summer, and fall.
The restriction stems from the new rules governing the Open Streets program that just went into effect, plus a dash of good old-fashioned sclerotic municipal bureaucracy—the kind of "red tape" that Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to slash.