It was Bronx Week last week, but that doesn’t mean the Bronx got its due from City Hall. Just the opposite.

On June 16, the mayor announced, with great fanfare and even rock icon David Byrne by his side, that the city was going to do something unprecedented and really groundbreaking by creating a car-free zone for three Sundays over the summer along a seven-mile stretch in Manhattan. The idea, they said was a big success in London, Paris, and even Bogota!

“…We have never been afraid to try new ideas, especially the ones that have the potential to improve the quality of life,” the mayor said.

If they had looked in the files, or maybe even asked a civil servant at the Department of Transportation (DOT), they would have discovered the idea was not at all new, and was implemented in the Bronx almost 20 years ago.

For five years, beginning in the early 1990s, 40 blocks of the center mall of the Grand Concourse were closed to car traffic, so residents could bike, walk, jog, skate and play along the historic thoroughfare for 12 summer Sundays.

Mayor Giuliani shut down the popular program probably because its chief cheerleader, Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, was expected to challenge him in the following year’s mayoral race. The program partially returned to a smaller portion of the Concourse the last two years, Crotona Park last month, and advocates are now trying to move it to Crotona Parkway.

We asked the DOT if they had any plans to bring something akin to Summer Streets anywhere in the Bronx. Crotona Parkway didn’t seem to be on its radar screen yet, but a spokesman told us, “We’re looking at places like the Grand Concourse and other corridors in the Bronx and elsewhere in the city for vehicle-free treatment.”  

We shall see.