NEW YORK, NY August 18, 2009 —City transportation officials say they've completed work closing stretches of Broadway to vehicles, and they'll now gather data to assess how traffic's been affected.

The preparations started at the beginning of summer and officially ended yesterday, with the unveiling of lots of shiny new street furniture for pedestrians in Times Square and Herald Square.

Jeffrey Zurofsky, the president of the Wichcraft chain of sandwich shops, says business at his Herald Square location has gone up 25 percent since Broadway was converted into a pedestrian plaza.

ZUROFSKY: That's great news considering that everything else in the economy is kind of flat right now. So to see an uptick like that has got to be related to the increase in pedestrian traffic.

The Department of Transportation says it will know later this year whether traffic has also improved. But some taxi drivers are skeptical, saying that traffic along Sixth Avenue through Herald Square is as bad as ever.