Isn't the area really refering to the exterior of the road? The way itself handles routing and the normal driveable part of the road.

This particular road as a whole is a regular road and is not a service road.

If this is incorrect, look at the roads to the east as well. Only Hudson Place and the bus lane area area service roads. The renderer isn't helping here, as it's arbitrarily making regular roads look hollow and without a surface area.

I copied some tags from roads and sidewalks labeled in lower Manhattan. There are several road surfaces that are not actual service roads:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/40.70351/-74.01345