As part of a larger plan to make one of the most bustling and traffic-plague city’s in the world a greener place to live (with less congestion issues), New York City’s Department of Transportation has banned cars from parts of Broadway at Times Square and at Herald Square. Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says her department will keep an eye on the car-banned area of city during the initial period.

City officials will be measuring the traffic flow between now and the end of the year, and subsequently making comparisons to congestion before and after the ban. The hope is that the ban will reduce pollution and pedestrian accidents, and make the traffic flow more smoothly.

The city of New York is in a grid pattern, but transportation officials theorize that Broadway affects traffic as it cuts diagonally across the grid, because it creates inconvenient intersections. Closing those intersections down at Times Square and Herald Square should significantly lessen the congestion of traffic.