NYC unveils first permanently gated ‘School Street’ in Hudson Square
Photos courtesy of NYC DOT
A car-free street next to a Manhattan public school got even safer for students this week. The city on Tuesday installed the first swing gate outside of City-As-School/M721 on Clarkson Street in Hudson Square, a designated “School Street,” a pedestrianized block next to schools. The permanent swing-arm gate eliminates the need to set up and take down metal barricades. Modeled after similar gates used at schools in Paris, the gate blocks traffic during the school day and opens outside school hours.
Located at both ends of the street, the gates are the first permanent fixtures installed through the DOT’s School Streets program, part of its broader Open Streets initiative. A “Street Seat” is also slated for the area, featuring wooden benches and a communal gardening space for students.
The project is funded by a $100,000 grant awarded to Open Plans and supported by General Motors to support City-As-School’s existing Open Street and create a safer, more welcoming public space for students and community members. More than a year of community engagement has shaped the initiative.
Previous methods used in the program relied on movable metal gates, which Flynn said created logistical challenges over who would move and maintain them, as reported by amNY.
“It made sense as an interim step, but had a lot of challenges in terms of who’s moving it? Who’s maintaining it? Where does it go? How do you make sure someone doesn’t walk away with it?” Flynn said, according to amNY.
He continued, “What is so exciting about this approach is that it really opens the possibilities to take that creativity with our streets and expand it citywide with something that is really lower maintenance and works better from a variety of standpoints.”
The new gates follow an August report released by Comptroller Mark Levine, which found that the current School Streets model had a low participation rate. According to the report, a long and complex application process has dissuaded schools from signing up.
During the 2025-26 school year, only 74 schools participated in the program, with just 48 of them being public schools.
Open Plans later released its own report echoing Levine’s findings and recommending that the model now in place on Clarkson Street be expanded citywide, creating “school plaza blocks” and “limited-entry School Streets.”
With more than 370 city public schools lacking on-site recreation space, Sabina Sethi Unni, a community planner at Open Plans, called the School Streets program an “essential” component of students’ development.
“School Streets are essential for providing NYC students with a place to socialize and grow, especially at the over 370 city public schools without on-site recreation space,” Unni said. “Clarkson Street is a model for expanding this program to as many schools as possible.”
“This gate creates a sturdy and safer public space that can be used daily, with less administrative burden, opening up new opportunities for outdoor learning and recreation with ease.”
Flynn said that while the agency still needs to assess how well the swing gates work, they could ultimately be expanded for School Streets and other types of Open Streets.
The hope is that this is something you can really scale up across the city, and would allow us to be a lot more nimble and move a little more quickly, and probably ultimately do it in a more resource-efficient way too for these types of streets, whether it’s in front of schools or other kinds of open streets,” Flynn said, according to amNY.
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