Streetsblog New York City

New York City’s parks are supposed to be a respite from the noise and stress of the city. It seems a few people haven’t got the message — and are using the Hudson River Greenway bicycle and pedestrian path as their personal driveway to the Upper Manhattan waterfront.

Reader Katty Van Itallie tells Streetsblog that she was biking on the greenway at about 6:30 p.m. yesterday when she came across a couple of SUVs parked on the grass near the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park. The drivers and passengers had set up a sunset picnic nearby. When she snapped some photos, one of the members of the group approached her, telling her not to take pictures of their cars and that they had a permit for the drive-in.

“There would certainly be a permit for a picnic. I can’t speak to the driving,” said Parks Department spokesperson Phil Abramson. UPDATE: ”No permits were issued for any kind of event at this park,” Abramson said in an e-mail to Streetsblog.

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Last month, Streetsblog reported that the Central Park loop would be getting a new lane configuration to clarify where pedestrians and cyclists belong, similar to changes recently implemented in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Less than 30 days after the announcement, walkers, joggers, and bike riders are all getting some extra room in the park, while the space for cars has been narrowed to one lane, calming vehicular traffic. Reader Rod Huntress sent in these photos from a ride this morning.

Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side, said the fix has been widely welcomed. ”Everybody seems pleased with the process and the outcome,” she said.

When New York City played host to the 1939 World’s Fair, the most influential attraction in Flushing Meadows was General Motors’ Futurama, a miniature vision of a future with highways crisscrossing through cities and mass ownership of the personal automobile. A science fiction vision at the time, it wasn’t far off from what ultimately happened.

Today, Flushing Meadows is a beloved park for the many Queens neighborhoods that border it, but one that retains an unusual degree of accommodation for the automobile. Residents are cut off from the park by two highways, the Van Wyck Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway, while the Long Island Expressway effectively cuts the park in two. Like the World’s Fair itself, all are Robert Moses creations.

And unlike in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where decades of activism have steadily reduced the amount of space and number of hours where cars are allowed in Central and Prospect Parks, in Queens’ premier park, the city is moving in the other direction. There are no car-free hours on Flushing Meadows’ park drives, for example.

And now, the desire to expand the park’s use as a site for major sports stadiums could bring hundreds or even thousands of new parking spaces inside the park, drawing new automobile trips on park roads.

As first reported by the Daily News, the United States Tennis Association wants to build two new parking garages as part of its proposed expansion of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The expansion, which is focused on adding capacity during the U.S. Open, would turn two existing surface lots into structured garages, adding about 500 parking spaces in the process.

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The two-way, buffered bike lane across Central Park on 72nd Street is rounding into form, with most but not all of the markings in place, readers tell us. The path is rideable in both directions, adding a critical piece of east-west connectivity to the bike network.

Reader Heidi Untener sends this pic from a recent trip on the improved 72nd Street, which used to provide only a westbound lane for bikes, and nothing between the Central Park loop and the eastern and western edges of the park. The two-way path consists of spacious seven-foot-wide bike lanes and a four-foot buffer, and the motor vehicle right-of-way has been slimmed from two lanes to one.

Heidi reports that there are no directional arrows yet, and that the bikeway is still a little “funky” where it crosses the loop on each side of the park. Overall she said the bikeway is going to make daily trips to school and camp with her kids much better. She and her family “cheer each time we ride through.”

When the Central Park Conservancy announced the DOT project last year, car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin called it “a significant step both toward making crossing the park on a bicycle less perilous and toward a car-free park in general.”

If you’ve been following the transportation bill news from Streetsblog Capitol Hill, then you know we are going to be posting a deluge of bad news. Savor this bit of progress, Streetsblog readers, because it’s probably the only scrap of news today that will nourish your hope for the future.

Here’s another angle, courtesy of Ken:

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In the midst of a 2004 petition drive and campaign, Transportation Alternatives hired me to produce a mini-film called “The Case for a Car-Free Central Park.” It featured interviews with many prominent New Yorkers, like Columbia professor Ken Jackson and author Roberta Brandes Gratz, along with dozens of everyday park-goers testifying about how they felt about cars in the park.

The film was the centerpiece of a TA rally attended by nearly 700 people. Just a few weeks after the rally, the city took substantial action. From TA’s chronology of cars in Central Park:

2004:  Speed limit on the loop drive reduced from 30 mph to 25 mph. West 90th and East 102nd Street entrances and exits closed to cars. West 77th and East 90th entrances closed to cars. West 72nd street slip-ramp closed to cars. People reclaim overnight and early mornings in the park. Cars get to enter 7 am to 10 am and 3 pm to 7 pm. HOV 2+ rule on West drive during morning rush hours.

It’s an absolute honor that “The Case for a Car-Free Central Park” was selected as a featured element for “Activist New York,” an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Beginning May 4, the program will examine social activism from the 17th century to the present. We’re glad the curators realized the significance of this video in New York’s history.

Make sure to check out what surely should be an excellent exhibit. For now, you can watch the entire 20-minute film, available for the first time ever on Streetfilms!

As first documented by @noahbudnick, the section of the Prospect Park loop south of the lake has had new markings (and a smooth, fresh surface) for a few weeks. On this section you can experience the more spacious 24/7 accommodations for walkers, joggers, and cyclists that will soon expand to the rest of the loop. I was over there about two weeks ago and it was kind of remarkable to see everyone using the lane designated specifically for them.

According to electronic message boards stationed in the park, the rest of the loop will get new markings starting on May 11 (word is new pavement is not in the works). Now about that rush-hour car lane…

This summer, cyclists will have a second path to safely cross Central Park.

At a meeting of CB 7′s Parks Committee last night, Central Park Conservancy President Doug Blonsky announced that the Department of Transportation will paint a new two-way bike lane along 72nd Street all the way between Central Park West and Fifth Avenue, reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes on that stretch of the park road from two to one.

Unlike the new cross-park bike route near 96th Street, this one won’t be a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians, nor will it include dismount zones at either end of the park. Blonsky said the redesign should be in place by June.

“This is a significant step both toward making crossing the park on a bicycle less perilous and toward a car-free park in general,” said Manhattan Community Board 7 member and car-free Central Park advocate Ken Coughlin. “For the first time, cyclists will legally be able to traverse the entire park without walking their bikes at any point or risking their lives on the sunken transverses.”

At the meeting last night, Blonsky said that reviews of the designated bike route along 96th Street have been positive so far, but that no additional crosstown bike paths through the park are planned until the Conservancy has more time to observe the first two, according to Coughlin. Previously, the Conservancy floated plans for additional cross-park paths at 102nd Street and 86th Street.

The removal of a traffic lane from 72nd Street, which is open to cars during rush hour, marks another step in the incremental reclamation of Central Park from motor vehicles. ”The fact that non-motorized transportation now has priority on a park road bodes well for a return to the true urban refuge the park’s designers envisioned and created,” said Coughlin.

Last year, several community boards surrounding the park and the Manhattan Borough Board voted in favor of a summer car-free trial. In response, the Bloomberg administration apparently began to measure traffic volumes on the park road so the effect of a trial can be quantified.

Brooklynites like the idea of reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes cutting through Prospect Park from two to one. They’d like zero even better.

A crowd of roughly 150 gathered in the Prospect Park Picnic House last night to hear a proposal from the Prospect Park Alliance’s road sharing task force. As reported yesterday, the plan puts the vehicle lanes on a road diet, expanding pedestrian and bicycle space while reducing the confusion caused by road markings that only apply during the small amount of time when cars are allowed in the park.

Under the plan, the loop would be divided into three roughly equal sections. Motor vehicles would have a single 10-foot lane along with a three-foot shoulder. Cyclists will have 10 feet in the middle of the road, divided into lanes for slower and faster riders. The remaining space, 14 feet or more, would be for runners and walkers. “There was a sense that the space was just not wide enough for both bikes and pedestrians,” said park administrator Emily Lloyd.

During the majority of the week, when most cars are not allowed in the park, the uses would remain the same, hopefully reducing confusion about which park users were supposed to be where when. “All of the things we paint on the roadway can be consistent,” said Lloyd. During car-free hours, the motor vehicle lane would be designated for park or police vehicles. The intent is to encourage cyclists to use it as a passing lane but not a primary space for biking.

Overall, the proposal won near-unanimous support. “The best compromise I’ve seen anybody come up with in years,” said transportation planner Steve Faust. “A marked difference right away,” said Harry Edmund Bolick, a member of the Kissena Cycling Club.

One of the few opponents of the proposal, Mark Russo, argued that having only one lane in the park would mean more congestion. “If you have one slow vehicle,” he said, “you’re going to have massive traffic jams.” DOT projections showed that the average delay due to traffic would only rise from 5.9 seconds to 13.3 seconds on the east side of the loop in the morning, and from 4.6 to 5.6 seconds on the west side in the evening. That’s “a level of service you will never see on a city street during rush hour,” said Lloyd. Only 700 vehicles an hour use the loop during the morning rush, and a scant 250 per hour during the evening.

Most speakers at last night’s meeting thought the plan didn’t go far enough.

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At a public meeting tonight, the Prospect Park Road Sharing Task Force will present a plan to double the amount of space for pedestrians on the Prospect Park loop and reduce confusion between pedestrians and cyclists during the vast majority of time that the park is car-free.

The Prospect Park Alliance established the task force last July in the wake of a collision where a cyclist traveling on a downhill seriously injured a pedestrian. Prospect Park Administrator Emily Lloyd told the Times that the task force, which includes a broad array of park users, city agencies, elected officials, and advocates, has reached an “enthusiastic consensus” for reconfiguring the loop drive with one fewer lane for cars and more space for walking and biking.

Currently the loop drive is open to motor traffic from 7-9 a.m. on the east side of the park and from 5-7 p.m. on the west side. During those hours, when people take advantage of the park before and after the work day, thousands of pedestrians and cyclists cram into the narrow confines of the marked walking and biking lanes, while most of the loop is given over to car commuters. The motorists have more space than they know what to do with: A speed gun survey conducted by the Prospect Park Youth Advocates in 2008 found that 90 percent of drivers on the loop exceed the 25 mph speed limit.

Meanwhile, during the entire weekend and the 22 hours each weekday when any given segment of the loop is car-free, the markings make little sense. Scattered signs explain that cyclists should use the “traffic lanes” while pedestrians have the run of the “bike lane,” but the street markings are omnipresent. The confusion about who belongs where is often cited as a factor contributing to bike-ped collisions on the loop.

The task force proposal will give some breathing room to pedestrians and cyclists during the a.m. and p.m. crunch, and it should get more drivers to adhere to the speed limit. It’s a big improvement. But a comprehensive fix would go farther, making Prospect Park car-free 24 hours a day. As long as there’s a motor vehicle lane in Brooklyn’s flagship park, people on the loop will still be exposed to fast-moving cars, and street markings won’t match the actual rules most of the time.

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Transportation Alternatives and the New York Chapter of the American Association of Family Physicians today released a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, signed by 140 medical professionals from a broad spectrum of specialties, praising the city’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure as essential to the health of New Yorkers. It’s a solid counterweight to the hysteria surrounding the recent Hunter College bike-ped crash study:

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

While one can imagine a tsunami of ink engulfing the city if over a hundred doctors and other providers had joined up to condemn bike lanes and public plazas, with media types refusing to print a positive word about measures that are making streets safer, it will be quite a feat if this ringing endorsement pierces the news cycle.

Read the text of the letter after the jump; see the original with signatures here.

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