Canal Street is one of Manhattan’s busiest corridors, but between Varick Street and the Manhattan Bridge, there is virtually no escape from the oppressive heat because there are virtually no trees.

And no relief is coming, the Parks Department told Streetsblog.

Canal Street is “fully stocked,” Nicholas Zito, deputy director of tree planting at the Parks Department, told Streetsblog. The agency has “planted in all feasible locations.”

And trees are not a stated part of the Department of Transportation’s plan to widen sidewalks and add bike connections to the area next year.

Why is Canal Street such a desert?

In response to complaints by local residents — full disclosure, I am such a person — about the lack of tree cover on Canal at a mayoral town hall in 2023, the Parks Department dispatched two “foresters” to perform an “on the ground” survey of all opportunities for planting additional trees along the Canal Street corridor.

The result: 29 new trees were planted in 2024 — eight of the spindly arbors are on the busiest portion of Canal west of Varick.

Want shade on Canal? Wait 30 years.Photo: Bess Adler

As Carrie Bradshaw might say, and just like that, the Parks Department was done. Between Baxter and Varick street — a nearly half-mile stretch of its central business corridor — there are just seven trees.

In fairness, Zito said he is desperate to do more. But on paper, the job is finished. On the ground, the reality is punishing.

The stakes are high 

According to Cool Neighborhoods NYC, the city’s climate-resilience initiative, more Americans die from heat waves every year than from all other extreme weather events combined (report). The plan calls for “massive investment” and inter-agency coordination to reduce urban heat, with street trees identified as critical cooling infrastructure.

Street trees can lower surface temperatures by 20 to 45 degrees and reduce peak summer air temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration, according to the federal EPA (yes, still!). They filter pollutants from the constant flow of diesel trucks, providing cleaner air and cooler streets.

Without them, Canal becomes a heat trap. City heat maps show that neighborhoods with low canopy cover suffer higher rates of heat-related illness and death.

This woman found a tiny bit of shade on Canal Street between Wooster and Greene streets.Photo: Bess Adler

And yet, on Canal Street — a corridor lined with idling trucks, dense pedestrian traffic, and relentless sun — the city has stopped planting more trees. The disconnect is immense.

Even the Department of Transportation has seemingly no interest in the subject. In its summary document for its Canal Street Visioning Project outreach (PDF), the word “tree” does not even appear.

The Parks Department faces real obstacles wherever trees are needed, such as subway infrastructure, vaulted sidewalks, dense underground utilities, and ADA sidewalk clearance requirements among other things.

But on Canal Street, the city is in a unique bind, according to Zito: the corridor is marked by high truck volumes, an abundance of street vendors, and intense pedestrian traffic. Even where trees can be installed, “survival is tenuous,” according to Zito as road salt damages roots, compacted soils suffocate them and passing trucks shear off branches in what foresters grimly call “truck pruning.”

In other words, the urban blight that trees mitigate — heat, pollution, traffic — conspire against their very existence on Canal Street.

On the street

The NYC Parks Interactive Tree Map (map) shows all of the trees on Canal Street, where there was almost no planting activity between 2015 (the date of the last tree census) and 2024. The map shows some trees, yes, but virtually all of them are too small to cast meaningful shade and too dispersed to form any sort of canopy.

The news that Canal Street is “fully stocked” has alarmed advocates.

“If the city has tapped out of tree planting on Canal, then they have to come up with solutions to create shade in other ways,” said Emily Jacobi, Manhattan organizer for Transportation Alternatives. 

Jacobi said her organization measured street-level temperatures on Canal Street and compared them to a nearby SoHo street with some tree canopy. The temps on Canal were 10 degrees hotter. “The heat along Canal is at crisis levels, especially for aging New Yorkers,” she added.

Why no fix?

The city does a tree census for a reason — but if it doesn’t take action, there’s no point, experts said.

“The tree census isn’t just about counting trees — it’s about identifying where we’re failing the most vulnerable communities,” said Dan Zarrilli, the special adviser on Climate and Sustainability at Columbia University. “If Canal Street is already considered ‘done,’ that shows how far behind we are. The hottest, hardest streets are where we should be leading, not giving up.”

The desertification of Canal Street is just a microcosm of a global urban crisis of rising heat. Even small municipalities are taking creative steps to cool their streets. In Toledo, Spain, for example, the city has stretched cloth over narrow streets to function as a sun screen canopy. If a historic city with medieval streets can innovate to mitigate heat, it underscores how glaring the absence of shade is on Canal — one of New York’s busiest, most modern corridors.

One of Canal Street’s landlords is Vornado Realty Trust, which owns multiple properties along the corridor, most notably 334 and 304–306 Canal Street (formerly Pearl Paint). The company declined to comment when asked if it will include trees or green plantings as part of its development plans.

Council Member Chris Marte, whose district includes Canal, has long allocated discretionary funds for tree planting and maintenance. But he got the same response from Parks: there’s no more room under current constraints.

Marte says he’s now working with local businesses and business improvement districts to implement “daylighting” so that trees or greenery can replace parking spaces — and is pressing DOT to incorporate shade into upcoming redesigns.

“Everyone wants this,” Marte said. “It doesn’t take massive capital projects. It takes will. And it needs to happen now.”

I asked Bill Ferns, a local resident who also involved with the Senior Advocacy Leadership Team, a volunteer group that advocates for elderly, for his thoughts about shade on Canal Street and his first reaction was deadpan: “There’s shade on Canal Street?”

Obviously, he was kidding — he knows there’s no shade on Canal Street. But he also pointed out the other problem: The very design and placement of the street encourages car use and throughput. And allowing so much parking brings more cars and the “intense heat” that accompanies them.

Worse, he added, “The sidewalks on Canal Street are so narrow for the amount of pedestrian traffic it has that any plan by the Department of Transportation to plant more trees should involving removing street parking rather than cutting into the sidewalks. Canal needs wider sidewalks.”

The awfulness of Canal Street is exacerbated by the absence of trees.Photo: Bess Adler

The DOT has been talking about a redesign of Canal Street since at least 2011, but it is mired in delays. In 2023, the agency said it would undertake an eight-month traffic review, but it was either not done or not released. A fatal crash at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge has expedited the planning, DOT claims, but the agency’s own report on Canal and its needs doesn’t even mention trees. (Ironically, the cover of the report, features a couple of very spindly nothingarbors, which highlights the need for change.)

The DOT did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.