I have been stewing over the lack of follow-up media coverage of the incident discussed in the post. I wrote to WABC and asked them to follow up, but got radio silence. I tried to get the info out of the Central Park Precinct, but they would not tell me anything. So I sent the NYPD a letter requesting all records regarding the incident and the police conclusion of "no criminal act", pursuant to the NYS Freedom of Information Law. Let's see what happens.

The speed limits around the entire City need to come down. There's no reason a city street should allow cars and trucks to travel at 30mph.

Oh, who cares, no one enforces the speed limit on NYC's city streets anyway.

Last night on the way town to the TA shindig, I passed all the new signs that DOT has installed on the West Side bike path stating "No Motor Vehicles" (they apparently haven't gotten around to posting the "No Drunken Assholes" signs). Piss-poor recompense for the death of Eric Ng, but it's possible that those signs will save someone else's life or at least limit the number of people who are scared away from bicycling in the city because of all the deaths.

Regardless of the circumstances of the accident discussed in this post (if the press ever muster enough attention to report them), I hope this person survives. In any event, the only possible good I can see coming from this crash is if DOT (or whoever is responsible for the transverses) does *something* to make them less dangerous for cyclists. The thirty-block stretch from 72d to 103d is just too big to expect that bicyclists will not use the 86th and 96th Street transverses as crosstown routes.

Steve, we're on the same team, man. My point was that although closing one of the transverses and putting in a farmer's market and bike lanes appeals to the bike activist in me, it's just too unrealistic. Given that we accept that some vehicles will be using the streets of Manhattan in some capacity in the foreseeable future, there will have to be a way for them to get through the park.

Let's keep our eyes on the ball here. I didn't mean to stifle playful and creative thought on these issues, but activists need to have priorities, and I don't see Transverse Reform at the top of the list.

In that regard, have the police and/or prosecutors downloaded the extensive driver behavior records that are stored on the cars event recorder? If that information exists, and it may be either exculpatory or determinative, shouldn't it be recorded for the District Attorney's study, before a determination of guilt or innocence has been made?

Sproule, the transverse roads once were narrower than they now are, too narrow for cars, but Robert Moses had them widened to accommodate cars. I know that undoing Moses' work is for another day, but if fear of appearing "fringe" leads you to denounce even my bare statement that closing a transverse and converting it to other public uses is a "possible fix to current Central Park transverse hazards," then I don't see how we get from here to there. Mike, your comment that "Perhaps we need ways to make sure that bicyclists have safe, legal cross-Park routes, without closing a Transverse" is well taken but ignores the two such ways proposed in my earlier comments. Do you think they would work, or are they (or am I) too "fringe" to respond to? You guys are doing "the man's" work for him.

That said, I'll be more careful not to get out too far ahead of the Streetblog crew in the future, since my goal is dialogue.

Sure, it's fun to day-dream about what-if scenarios like no cars anywhere in Manhattan, but the risk with proposing pie-in-the-sky transportation ideas in popular forums like this (I've heard Streetsblog is visited by many users from the nyc.gov domain...can anyone verify this?) is that it can cement the idea that we are a "fringe" movement, out of touch with mainstream NYC. I don't care about being in the mainstream, but a policy has to resonate with a majority of constituents to be enacted. Keeping the below-ground transverses open to cars is a big part of the Keep Cars Out Of Central Park movement. I don't think they are a high priority.

One of the great things about an independent space like Streetsblog is that we can explore ideas whose time has not yet come, without those aspirational dialogues dragging down effective, necessary organizations like Transalt (or for that matter, in post below, Environmental Defense). And the mere act of floating "outlandish" ideas like turning the transverses into farmers' markets makes them less outlandish and might even generate concrete strategies for realizing them.

You are right that getting cars out of the Loop Drive is hard enough, and certainly don't want to undermine that effort. At the same time, when the dangers to bicyclists latent in the transverse road become manifest as they did last night, it creates an opportunity to educate and agitate for a solution to those dangers. That's what I was trying to do.

1. Close one or more of the transverse roads to vehicular traffic and convert it (them) to two-way Class 1 bike lane(s) plus an "agora" with stalls for farmers' markets and other vendors.

2. Convert one or more sidewalks of transverse roads to Class 1 bicycle and pedestrian shared-use lanes; get added width necessary for this to work by stealing a foot or two from the motor vehicle lanes, which would be limited to 15 MPH.

3. Repair roadbeds, and install sharrows, speed humps, speeding cameras, and "Share the Road" signs on each transverse, and impose 15 MPH.

That ad is just one more thing that degrades the profession of acting.

And yes, it's an extra disgrace that it appears on top of this particular story.