People are dying and getting seriously hurt in the park, and it is not because of crime. We are doing it to ourselves. It is time for a plan, and if the city can’t come up with one, the citizenry should themselves. Politics always follows public opinion, because they all must get elected sooner or later. I could write a plan in twenty minutes. Park congestion is handled in parks all over the world without a fuss. It is time to help people enjoy the park without getting hurt, and still remain fit, healthy, while getting from Point A to Point B.

Getting cars out of the park is a good start, and I mean city cars also that do not drive in the right direction also. I’m a professional cyclists and I love to see parents bring children to the park to ride their bikes. I often encourage them and I run childrens cycling programs.

Racing and training are two very different animals. A faster rider always has the obligation to watch out for slow riders and children, peds, scaters, shoping carts, or whatever. The people who can’t stand to be passed by another biker are mental. This is a complex like road rage that happens only in New York parks as I see it, because I have riden all over the world. Once rules of conduct are posted and upheld, the caos will stop. You can’t fault people for running amuck when that is just what we are telling them to do… Stay safe alright

On the weekends, the joggers and peds take over the entire roadway and assume that everybody will be able to yield to them no matter what they do. Two weekends ago, when I moved into the bicycle lane to avoid a Parks Department garbage truck, a jogger moving in the opposite direction stuck his hand out at face level so I had to duck to avoid getting hit. I pulled over and he yelled at me that I couldn’t ride in the bicycle lane on the weekends because the traffic lanes were open. I told him that he couldn’t hit me and called back, “I hit you anytime I want!”

I sometimes have a problem taking my 4 year old daughter bicycling in CP because of the possibility that she will be hit by the fitness-training bicyclists on the outer two lanes, while the joggers and pedestrians demand that she stay out of the bicycle lane. When I’m with her, I try to stick to the two roadways in CP that are not part of the loop and are 24 hours prohibited to cars, the spur to the Plaza and the (misnamed) Central Park Driveway which runs from 105th on the East Side to 102nd on the West Side.

The laws for bicycles in CP are completely unrealistic as applied to the weekend. Bicycles cannot be ridden anywhere in CP except designated paths. That means the officially marked bike lane on the loop, Central Park Driveway, Terrace Drive (at 72nd St) and the spur to the Plaza. On the weekends, however, bicyclists would inevitably kill (and/or be killed by) joggers and pedestrians if they stuck to the loop bike lane. There should be weekend designations for loop–the weekday jogger and bicyclist lanes could be for joggers; the middle traffic lane could be for slow bicyclists, in line skaters, etc.; and the outer lane for fitness-training cyclists.

At the end of the day, though, in most cases I’d prefer to ride my bike in CP when it’s car free than anywhere on the street in NYC, even with all the joggers, peds, and the rest.

Not having car-free hours during the day has drastically reduced my use of the park. A car-free loop not only benefits people on wheels, but makes the park a MUCH better place for people on foot who are not even in the roadway as the park is much quieter and serene.

Notice that I refer it as “the loop” where as the city refers to it as the “park DRIVES.” Another indication of car-culture saturated mentality. BTW, there’s way too many “authorized” vehicles on the loop during non-car hours.

Thanks for your hard work on this issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaD0fgKfFo4

OK, seriously, this clip does not reflect traffic resulting from the holiday mitigation plan but rather that caused by NYC marathon preparations on october 31. But it does demonstrate how quickly traffic can transform the park into a parking lot. Thank heavens there is a bike lane or there would be three lanes of cars!

This led me to think that speed bumps tuned to the actual speed limit in the park of 25 mph would be very useful in minimizing danger from cars that do choose to enter the park. (Including park workers and others who appear to be allowed to drive at any time.)

Yet a big piece of the park was off-limits–the loop road. The Park Loop was almost deserted in the morning and early afternoon–the “pulses” of traffic coming through each contained 2-5 cars but this kept us off the loop (we had a 4-year old with us. Instead, we tried to squeeze into the 4 foot bike lane or annoyed pedestrians on the paths. What a waste! Even in the later afternoon, there were never more than 5-7 cars per “pulse,” but they monopolized the entire loop.

One concern: Rightly or wrongly, mightn’t the DOT logically conclude from your paragraph 8 that the “average 82 additional cars a day during the holiday weeks” on 5 Av, CPW, etc., would’ve been much larger if cars were *not* allowed on the loop during the holiday season?

Albert

Interestingly, when I called this into the CP Precinct (not yet having seen the signs announcing the opening), they just nodded and, when I asked the desk clerk explicitly if they were going to enforce the closure (that I thought was still in effect), said they would!