The Feds Are Threatening the Future of One of New York City’s Most Famous Tourist Attractions

When the folk-rock band America released their greatest hits album Highway: 30 Years in America in 2000, they presumably had in mind Route 66, US 1, and, of course, Ventura Highway. One place where the free wind is definitely not blowing through your hair is the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, in Manhattan’s Times Square. But that is now a “highway” too, according to the MAP-21 federal transportation bill passed through Congress and signed by President Obama in 2012. And it has set up a fight between Big Government and the Big Apple.

Because MAP-21 reclassified major roadways in several major cities as highways, drawing them under the purview of the National Highway System, the roads running through Times Square now fall under the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, as well — which prohibits billboards over 1,200 square feet within 660 feet of a highway. That’s a big problem in Times Square. Now the federal Department of Transportation is ordering New York City to take down Times Square’s illegal billboards, or pay the associated penalties — a 10 percent reduction in the state’s federal highway funds.

Seventh Avenue is not a “highway,” as anyone who has driven it — or, more likely, hoofed it afoot — knows. Highways do not have sidewalk halal vendors.

“This is a gross and heavy-handed effort by the federal government to undermine New York’s vibrant street life,” says New York University’s Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning. “This is another example where the federal and state governments should stay out of New York. They have enough to do elsewhere.”

Indeed. And as a straightforward matter of historical intent, Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification campaign was never intended to regulate midtown Manhattan.

This is not just government overreach; it is government unreality. Seventh Avenue is not a “highway,” as anyone who has driven it — or, more likely, hoofed it afoot — knows. Highways do not have sidewalk halal vendors.

Yet government machinations thrive on the ability to redefine, or simply to replace, words. Obamacare, for example, defined “full-time” down by ten hours to force more employers into the system, while defenders of the president’s policies have redefined “jobs” to deflect bad Congressional Budget Office studies. In other cases, certain words have been simply excised: The Islamic State is not Islamic or a state; it is a “cancer,” which we will eradicate not with war, but with “kinetic military action.” Islamic terrorism — pardon, “extremism” — is a “man-caused disaster.”

Polly Trottenberg, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Transportation, says that the reclassification of major Manhattan roads was “well-intentioned.” Perhaps so. But increasingly one sees the language of Washington depart from the language of the rest of America. Language that should be technical and precise, so that the limits on government activity might be made clear and unmistakable, is allowed to grow vague, so that centralizers can bring a bit more land, a few more lives, under their control.

As a different band might say, we’re on the highway to Hell. But at least it’s billboard-free.