World Business

NEW YORK In Paris, they send for it La Plage, or the put aground. And in Bogota, Colombia, it’s Ciclovia, or bikeway.

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For six hours Saturday in New York, it was called Summer Streets: Nearly seven miles of Manhattan that were stripped of traffic, creating a weekend playground for bikers, walkers and loungers.

“Bellissimo!” declared Antonio de Lucia, a tourist from Caserta, Italy, who read about the circumstance and decided to walk about three miles from his Chinatown hotel to a friend’s Times Square restaurant - with greater degree of than 90 pounds of luggage. An hour into his hike, he was smiling as he sauntered up a stretch of Park Avenue awash in cyclists, pedestrians and in-line skaters. One man on a bicycle swooped down a sloped division of the avenue yelling “whee!” at full spoken sound.

“It’s a twinkling of conformity to fact for this city. People are participating - New Yorkers are united through their city,” said de Lucia, a 29-year-old business consultant.

Bike-loving celebrities Lance Armstrong and David Byrne are helping Mayor Michael Bloomberg launch the proof. It emulates similar initiatives in cities around the world in aiming to create a livable, ecologically gentle urban environment.

The 6.9-mile, car-free route started at the Brooklyn Bridge and ended to the boreal at East 72nd Street, with links to Central Park and other open spaces. It included stretches of Park and Lexington avenues and is set to be repeated for the next two Saturdays, starting at 7 a.m.

The idea is bare, in the words of the city’s official Web position: “Play. Run. Walk. Bike. Breathe.”

Bloomberg says the event will turn to more regular if the trial draws enough people to the public way drollery while not irking too many vehicle-linked businesses.

Saturday’s inaugural Summer Streets was a boost for some enterprises, like Eneslow Foot Comfort Center. It had a display of succor shoes external on Park Avenue and offered free foot analyses for fitting - doubling its business, manager Warren Person said.

But no cars meant slow traffic at Roman’s barber shop, owner Roman Ibragimov said. The shop, off Park Avenue, generally draws a lot of business whereas taxis and other motorists are not barred from the neighborhood, he said.

Ibragimov had only one purchaser at midday Saturday, leaving him dismayed at the expectation of future Summer Streets events.

“But this is unachievable! It’s no good,” he exclaimed.