Times Square Pedestrian Bridge

Billings Jackson Design collaborated with Two Twelve Harakawa, a New York-based graphics and wayfinding consultancy, on this proposal for the Times Square Alliance.

The key challenge facing Times Square is balancing the needs of tourists and of New Yorkers, as both groups currently suffer from poor traffic control and overcrowding. The team was determined to create places for people to meet and pause, to celebrate the energy and history of the square and to instil civic pride while improving both pedestrian and vehicular traffic flow.

The key intervention is a raised pedestrian bridge with ramp access that over-sails the square, swelling in the middle to literally create a platform for people to meet, take pictures, gather into tour groups or watch performances. It is a destination within the square and a means of separating the tourists from local office workers and through traffic.

The bridge is given vertical presence with a mast that doubles as a broadcast uplink, facilitating large-scale media events in the square and creating a focus within the visual noise of Times Square to orientate visitors.

The proposal includes additional design interventions at the human scale to engage the side streets and further improve wayfinding, security and traffic control. These also express the fact that this is a considered, holistic design strategy as befits a site of this significance.

These complementary interventions comprise seating in side streets to extend the experience beyond the centre, moveable bollards to control traffic as required and offer branding opportunities, orientation markers sets into the pavements and newsstands at key locations (these designed by Billings Jackson for Cemusa) enable streaming of public information, news, advertising and even digital backdrops for small-scale performance.