So you acknowledge that the choice was made between maintaining a car lane or providing a safe and accessible path for pedestrians. In other words, the title of this thread.

A travel lane, by the way, that is almost always filled with parked cars with their hazards on, making it not much of a lane at all.

If extremely crowded Manhattan can find the space to always provide a walkway, than so can Newark.

Regardless, the burden of how the accommodation is provided should fall on the construction people.

Heres another example in NYC with two simultaneous projects

One side of the street they build an in-road walkway
https://goo.gl/maps/iqJRCwpifbBUwLFY9

So presumably the folks across the street who started their construction later had to create a pedestrian tunnel since they couldnt use another lane

https://goo.gl/maps/EzHQQ62uBuD8obB76
https://goo.gl/maps/EAA5Pzp6g2NbRaAx5