Not at all. In Jerusalem, Yafo Street is now pedestrian and light-rail only. Even still, police vehicles routinely drive on Yafo Street, and coexist with the light rail by not parking on the tracks. When police vehicles have their sirens on, pedestrians get out of the way. Deliveries occur on side streets and alleyways.

The Jerusalem municipality closed literally the busiest street in Jerusalem to private vehicular traffic and the results could not be better. It turns out, "induced demand" isn't just an idea which explains why you get more traffic when you build more highway lanes, it can also explain how to get more foot traffic, too. So business is booming, and the area is vitalizing even more.

Manhattan has 4x the population density of Jerusalem (twice the population in half the space). On top of that, it's an island so alternate traffic routes sometimes don't exist.

Is only Yafo blocked? Blocking a street is one thing, but eliminating cars from Lower Manhattan is another.

Vienna's city center is car-free except for police and ambulances. It's a medieval city so it's much worse than Manhattan in regards to narrow streets and not having been designed for cars.

It does have AMAZING transportation which NY might lack though (haven't been in NY yet).

The main shopping street is car-free too. It's great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places

Ban all passenger vehicles, cut the size of the roads, expand the subway: you've just made life easier for emergency vehicles to get where they're going. Taxis are horrendously space inefficient in a city choking on people.