Your Summer Streets Guide

You’ve probably heard me talk about it, especially if we’ve chatted about running in the city. Every August New York City gives us a few Saturdays with no car traffic on Park Ave and it is one of my most favorite times of the year. In my opinion, Summer Streets is the jewel of NYC summer and each year I look forward to seeing what I am able to accomplish compared to the year before. It’s where I ran my first 10k, my first 15k, and every half marathon run I’ve run. It has definitely been a huge part of my running journey.

Summer Streets is NYC DOT's annual program that closes major corridors to car traffic and opens them up to walkers, runners, cyclists, and skaters - with rest stops along the way offering fitness classes, live performances, art installations, and local vendors. It's free, it's rain or shine, and it turns some of the most car-choked streets in Manhattan into a place you can actually run a straight line for miles without breaking stride at a crosswalk.

The program launched in August 2008 under then-DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, modeled directly on Bogotá's Ciclovía — a Colombian tradition dating back to 1974 where major roads close to cars so people can bike, walk, and gather — with an assist from Paris's temporary urban beach installations along the Seine. That first year was modest: three Saturdays, one route along Park Avenue and Lafayette Street between the Brooklyn Bridge and 72nd Street, an estimated 150,000 people showing up across those three days. The response was strong enough that NYC DOT made it an annual fixture, and it's been expanding pretty steadily ever since — East Harlem got added in 2022, and the program went city-wide to all five boroughs for the first time in 2023.

What's happening this year
2026 is the biggest version of this yet. The season runs five Saturdays total: Queens and Staten Island kicked things off on July 25, Brooklyn and the Bronx close out the season on August 22, and in Manhattan August 1, 8, and 15 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with the route running the full length of the borough for the first time: from the Brooklyn Bridge all the way up to Dyckman Street in Inwood.
A few things worth knowing about this year specifically:

• NYC DOT is partnering with New York Road Runners to bring the NYRR Start Line Series — free, beginner-friendly community running and walking events — to Manhattan for the first time, happening on August 1. If you've been thinking about easing into running, that's a genuinely good on-ramp.
• There's a rotating lineup of NYC DOT Art installations along the route this year, including a shade structure in Manhattan designed for chalk drawing with kids.
• Citi Bike is offering free or discounted rides across the Summer Streets Saturdays, so if you don't own a bike, this is a low-friction way to try one out over real mileage.
• This year also sits ahead of the 50th anniversary of the NYC Marathon this November, and NYRR has explicitly framed the expanded Start Line Series as part of building toward that — worth knowing if you're marathon-training right now, because Summer Streets Saturdays are a great low-stress place to log miles on closed roads.

Form more information, go to the official Summer Streets website https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/summerstreets.shtml


The recovery part

What I often see in the clinic the weeks during and after Summer Streets include: people who normally run three miles decide this is the day to do twelve, people who haven't been on a bike since last September do six miles of Park Avenue in the saddle, and people who "just walked" end up covering eight or nine miles round trip without really tracking it, because the environment makes it easy to keep going. None of that is bad — it's exactly the point of the event — but it means Sunday and Monday are when I hear about tight hip flexors, cranky low backs, sore Achilles tendons, and IT bands that suddenly have opinions.

A few things that actually help:

• Hydrate before, not just during. August in NYC means heat and humidity on top of mileage. Start the morning hydrated rather than trying to catch up mid-route.
• If you're on a bike for the first time in months, expect your low back and neck, not your legs, to complain. Bike posture loads the cervical and lumbar spine in ways that running and walking don't. A few minutes of cat-cow and doorway chest stretches that evening go a long way.
• Don't stretch cold muscle at a rest stop and call it done. The rest stops are great for a breather, but real recovery work — foam rolling, mobility work, or a needling session for a stubborn spot — is more effective a few hours after you're done, once things have settled.
• If something is more than "normal sore" by Tuesday — a sharp spot, a specific point that doesn't ease with movement, referred pain down a limb — that's usually a trigger point or irritated fascia that responds well to sports acupuncture or dry needling rather than something that just needs more rest.

Enjoy the car-free miles. If your hips or low back are still complaining by the following week, you know where to find me.