New York City will be completely closing the Great White Way to cars in both Times Square and Herald Square, the Times reports. For some context on this decision, check out my November profile of Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Bloomberg‘s transportation commissioner. Under Sadik-Khan’s leadership, New York has not only pursued congestion pricing, but in the wake of that proposal’s failure, policies of reclaiming surface space from cars and turning it over to pedestrians and cyclists.

In related good news, here in D.C. I walked to work today from Mt. Pleasant to South Dupont, and saw a record number of bike commuters. And, strangely, redheads.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.