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What if the city built a huge public park in the heart of Midtown, stretching half a mile over seven city blocks, about as big as the first phase of the High Line? What if that park already existed, dating to the 1980s, largely ignored but for the most knowing New Yorkers?

Were basically building a new pedestrian avenue in the heart of Midtown, one of the densest, busiest places on Earth, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said during an interview last week.

Call it 6th Avenue.

As Midtown began to creep West toward Times Square in the 1970s, a quirk in the zoning between Sixth and Seventh Avenues led to a string of towers in the middle of the block, all with public plazas, atria or arcades running through them. Everyday, thousands of people traverse this secret boulevard stretching from 51st Street to 57th Street, according to Department of Transportation data. They wind their way between parked cars, oncoming traffic and other obstructions, all in the hopes of shaving a few minutes off their walk and maybe avoiding the crowded avenues on either side.

Now, in an effort to create safer connections between these spaces while encouraging their use and also unclogging the avenues along the way, the Department of Transportation is creating a series of traffic interventions to link up these disparate shortcuts. The result should be somewhere between the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (though the Brooklyn Bridge may be more apt, given the crowds) and the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center. It should be a nice place to pass through, but also possibly to stop for a coffee or lunch, without fear of being mowed down on the way back to the office.

Weve been working very hard on the spaces between buildings and now were working very hard on the spaces within buildings, Ms. Sadik-Khan said. Were reprogramming underutilized road space while enhancing pedestrian spaces we already have and encouraging their use.

The plan calls for creating new pedestrian crossings between these public spaces, which generally are directly across the street from one another. Stop signs will be installed in front of new raised crosswalks. Warning markingsBUMP, STOP, chevrons and stripeswill all alert drivers to the new intersection while curbed cuts and painted street space will make crossing easier and prohibit parking. The goal, as with so many Sadik-Khan-era projects, is improved pedestrian circulation and traffic calming. The plan is currently parking neutral.

A tiny piece of the plans was implemented last fall, when a crosswalk was installed in the middle of 57th Street, with a traffic light instead of a stop sign. Commissioner Sadik-Khan said the results have been positive, with fewer illegal crossings and a reduction in accidents.

If it seems strange that all these public passageways should line up, that is how it was always meant to be. These spaces are a legacy of the same era that brought us Zuccotti Park. Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS, as they are often called, have been much in the news lately, thanks to Occupy Wall Street. The spaces in Midtown are at once similar and different. While none are as big as Zuccotti, they were all built to add precious square footage to the towers to which they are connected.

Sometimes this meant little more than opening up the lobby to the public, while other times developers would build soaring open air arcades. The stretch contains one of the greatest POPS in the city, the UBS Gallery at 1285 Sixth, the southern anchor of 6th Avenue, which houses works from the Smithsonian and not only runs north-south but also east-west. These spaces were not only created through POPS bonuses but also The Special Midtown District, codified in 1982 but in the works for almost a decade, that actively encourage developers to have their POPS line up with those of their neighbors. Without this provision, 6th Avenue would have been almost impossible to create.

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Meet Me on 6½th Avenue: DOT Planning Public Promenade Through Middle of Midtown Towers