Streetsblog New York City

Every community board surrounding Central Park has supported taking cars off the park loop for a summertime trial, but DOT has no plans to give kids and families more car-free time to bike. Photo: Asterix611 via Flickr.

The July 4 weekend is upon us and with it, the height of summer. If Manhattan’s community boards had their way, summertime would mean a trial closure of Central Park’s loop drive to cars.

A resolution to try out such a closure from “the summer months through Labor Day” earned the support of Community Boards 5, 7, 8, 9, and 11. Unanimous committee votes from CBs 1 and 10 showed those boards’ support. Every board surrounding the park has taken a stand in support of such a trial.

Given that summer is now in full swing, we checked in with the Department of Transportation to see whether they were going to listen to these communities and try taking cars off of the loop for the summer.

“There are no plans at this time,” was all that a DOT spokesperson would say. That’s not a hard “no,” but at this point in the summer, it’s awfully close.

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By unanimous voice vote, the full board of Manhattan CB 11 has passed a resolution endorsing a summer trial for a car-free Central Park. Says park advocate Ken Coughlin, “We have the agreement of all the boards surrounding the park and are now waiting for a response from DOT on whether they will move ahead with a July 4 weekend to Labor Day closing.”

The proposal has gained near-universal support at the community board level, with hundreds of board members voting in favor and only a handful of votes against, and is simpatico with the wishes of Central Park Conservancy head Douglas Blonsky. But it will need a push to overcome resistance from Mayor Bloomberg.

Coughlin says the next step will be a public campaign by Council Member Gale Brewer and others. (Streetsblog has messages in with Brewer’s office for details.) The Manhattan Borough Board must also cast an official vote on the resolution, Coughlin says, “Which will give us another opportunity to raise the issue, but we hope we won’t need it by then.”

Not only would the trial give users much needed room and the freedom to enjoy the city’s premier green space without having to dodge cars and suck exhaust this summer, the effect would spill over into surrounding neighborhoods, which could expect a major drop in cut-through traffic. Given the benefits and such a diverse base of approval, it’s hard to imagine what constituency the mayor would be playing to by refusing to close the Loop Drive for two months.

Manhattan Community Board 9 became the latest to endorse a car-free Central Park trial last night. By a vote of 32-9 with five abstentions, the board overwhelmingly overturned the 2-1 vote of its transportation committee, which had been the only committee in the borough not to endorse the plan thus far.

CB 9 is the fourth full board to vote in favor of taking automobiles off the Central Park loop drive for a trial period starting this summer, joining CBs 5, 7 and 8. In addition, committees from CBs 1, 10 and 11 have also endorsed the plan.

Before the meeting started, City Council Member Robert Jackson announced that he was in support of the trial, though not ready to take cars off the loop drive permanently. “I’m willing to try anything,” Jackson said.

Brad Taylor, a board member, explained the importance of taking cars off the loop to the West Harlem community. If the drive isn’t closed, he said, “traffic that wants to cut across to Midtown will be coming through our community. If they don’t have that option, they’ll stay where they are on the East Side or the West Side.”

Car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin cited a 2007 survey that found one third of the drivers on the Central Park loop came from the Bronx, ten percent from New Jersey, and six percent from Westchester. That adds up to 1,200 to 1,800 cars per day “that would not be on Harlem streets if it were not for the availability of the Park Drive,” he said. “Harlem has the most to gain from this trial.”

Said Lenna Nepomnyaschy, a long-time resident of the community district, in support of the proposal: “Having cars in the park is unbelievably horrible to see. All of a sudden the cars come in, there’s honking, there’s exhaust, there’s anger. There’s just not enough space for everyone.”

In order to ensure that the trial provides information that is as accurate as possible, the board amended the resolution to request that the car-free period extend sixty days after Labor Day, in order to be able to measure the effect of the closure on heavier traffic days.

Manhattan Community Board 8 voted Wednesday night in favor of a car-free Central Park trial this summer, joining an increasingly long list of community boards in support of the proposal. My unofficial tally of the roll call had the final vote at 36-8 in favor.

The car-free park trial has picked up committee votes at no fewer than seven community boards, as well as full board votes from CB 7, CB 5, and CB 9 (we’ll have more on the CB 9 vote later today). So far, the proposal seems to be on track to pick up an overwhelming show of public support from the districts surrounding the park, which will be needed to have a shot at overcoming Mayor Bloomberg’s opposition.

The CB 8 vote, which comes from a district bordering the park on the Upper East Side, is notable because the board has reverted to displaying one of the more virulently anti-bike stances in the city, and any proposal perceived to benefit cyclists must overcome a certain level of ingrained resistance.

Board member Michelle Birnbaum is probably the most consistently vocal opponent of bike and pedestrian improvements on CB 8. At a recent transportation committee meeting, she objected to the installation of marked crosswalks and pedestrian signals at an approach to the East River esplanade that crosses underneath the FDR Drive at 96th Street, saying that devices like advance-stop bars would cause traffic to back up too far on the highway service road, and that the city can’t put “plazas and umbrellas” everywhere.

Birnbaum was the only CB 8 member to speak against the car-free park proposal Wednesday night, which was introduced by transportation committee co-chair Jonathan Horn as “another proposal about Central Park and bicycles,” following the board’s vote against shared bike-ped paths across the park (more on that below).

Some highlights from Birnbaum’s unsuccessful attempt to sway the board against the car-free trial:

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Amid the flurry of community board votes this week on the proposed trial to make Central Park car-free this summer, we missed tonight’s CB 8 full board meeting.

The car-free trial resolution has pretty much sailed through in CB votes across Manhattan, and it cleared a combined vote of the CB 8 transportation and parks committees with only one vote against. As always, turnout is key. CB 8 is one of the districts bordering the park, all of which will have to pass the resolution in order to have a chance of overcoming mayoral resistance.

Tonight’s meeting will be held at 6:30 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, 430 E. 67th St. Auditorium.

Another day, another unanimous show of support for a summertime trial of a car-free Central Park. Last night, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 10, representing central Harlem, voted seven to zero in favor of the car-free trial, with one abstention.

The list of Manhattan community board votes supporting the trial period has grown to be pretty hefty at this point. Transportation, parks, or planning committees from boards 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 have all overwhelmingly supported the trial, as has the full body of Community Board 7. Only the transportation committee of Community Board 9 has opposed the plan, and then only by a vote of two to one; their full board is expected to readdress the issue when it meets with a larger and more representative set of people.

In all of those votes, only four people have voted against the car-free park trial, compared to nearly one hundred voting for it. As anyone who attends community board meetings knows, achieving that level of unanimity on any topic at all is practically unheard of. Even free ice cream cones would raise the hackles of more than four people distraught over the sidewalk-blocking lines or the excess litter.

As the district bordering the entire northern face of Central Park, CB 10′s vote is significant. “The argument for a trial closing that the committee members appeared to find particularly compelling,” reported car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin, “was that their neighborhood likely has the most to gain based on the overwhelming evidence that the loop is drawing traffic into their district that otherwise would stay on peripheral highways.”

This is what a grassroots groundswell of support looks like. Is Michael Bloomberg watching?

Support for a car-free Central Park trial is gaining momentum, with three additional community board nods.

There are two proposals in play. The first would close the park to cars for four months, from the July 4 weekend through the first weekend in November. A second plan, from the Manhattan Borough Board (borough boards are comprised of the borough president, borough City Council members, and the chair of each community board) would end the trial on Labor Day but allows for a DOT extension. Here’s the latest:

• Manhattan CB 7 has approved both the original and Borough Board resolutions by votes of 32-1 and 29-1, respectively.
• The transportation committee of CB 11 approved the Borough Board resolution unanimously.
• The CB 1 Planning and Community Infrastructure Committee also passed the Borough Board reso with a unanimous vote.

In 2006, car-free Central Park advocates delivered a petition with an unprecedented 100,000 signatures to City Hall. Image via Streetfilms

Despite the impressive shows of support from three Manhattan community boards over the last two weeks, the effort to take cars off of the Central Park loop for a summer-long trial hit a major snag last night. In a resounding vote of two to one with two abstentions, the transportation committee of CB 9 voted against the car-free trial.

Before last night, the car-free Central Park trial won the endorsement of five committees in three different community boards, with only one no vote between them all. Those committees were far larger than the CB 9 committee. Wednesday night’s vote at CB 8 was something along the lines of twenty to one. In contrast, it’s hard to say that the two opponents of the car-free trial last night have a much stronger claim to speak for the residents of Morningside Heights and West Harlem than the one supporter.

According to Ken Coughlin, a long-time leader in the effort to get cars out of Central Park, the two people who voted against the trial appeared dead set against it from the start. He also noted that the NYPD representative in attendance at the meeting made his opposition to the car-free park trial no secret.

Taking cars out of Central Park doesn’t require community board support; this is a decision that will be made at the mayoral level. So last night’s CB 9 vote isn’t an insuperable obstacle for car-free park advocates. Given the mayor’s current opposition to taking cars out of Central Park, however, building as strong a grassroots coalition of support as possible is critical.

To that end, it’s possible that advocates could bring the issue back before the full board meeting of CB 9 in two weeks with the goal of having the larger body overturn the committee’s decision.

In 2006, car-free Central Park advocates delivered a petition with an unprecedented 100,000 signatures to City Hall. Image via Streetfilms.

The momentum is growing for a summer-long trial of a car-free Central Park.

Two weeks ago, the transportation and parks committees of Manhattan Community Board 7, representing the Upper West Side, voted unanimously to support such a trial. Last week, the proposal passed the transportation committee of Midtown’s CB 5, again unanimously. And last night, the transportation and parks committees of the Upper East Side’s CB 8 voted to endorse the proposal with only one no vote between them. Three of the neighborhoods bordering the park — those with the most at stake — have now offered unambiguous endorsements of testing out a car-free park.

At last night’s CB 8 meeting, nearly every member of each committee expressed his or her opinion on the proposal, and they were overwhelmingly positive. Though some board members suggested uncontroversial tweaks to the plan, for most the benefits of at least trying out a car-free park were so self-evident they didn’t require elaboration. That’s a rarity in community boards, institutions rarely known for being reserved or concise. As Upper East Side resident Albert Ahronheim said last night, “there’s nothing to fear from this trial.”

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Last night’s unanimous votes in support of a summer-long car-free Central Park by Manhattan Community Board 7′s parks and transportation committees moved the ball forward for advocates of car-free parks. With no movement at the mayoral level on the issue, any successful push will have to come from the bottom up. Similar statements of community support will be needed from more than one neighborhood.

Everyone from members of the City Council to legendary Parks Commissioner Thomas Hoving has said that Mayor Bloomberg has the power to make Central Park car-free overnight.

In 2008, students marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and wrote 10,000 letters supporting a car-free Prospect Park. Current campaigns to make NYC's flagship parks car-free haven't seen the same level of local organizing. Photo: Ben Fried

Unfortunately, Bloomberg doesn’t appear disposed to do so any time soon. “If you did not allow cars in the park during rush hour,” the mayor said in March, “the rest of the city streets would be overloaded and it would create an awful lot of traffic.”

So the pressure to keep cars out of parks will have to come from the local level in the communities surrounding Central Park or Prospect Park. The CB 7 votes in favor of a summer pilot are an important step forward on that front; while the full board still needs to pass the resolution, it is likely to do so with that kind of committee vote.

This year, the City Council has become another arena for advancing car-free parks proposals. Upper West Side rep Gale Brewer recently introduced legislation to make Central and Prospect Parks car-free.

But Brewer’s efforts in the Council haven’t gained traction. Only four of her colleagues — Fernando Cabrera, Letitia James, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Daniel Dromm — signed onto the bill. Last month, Brewer decided to drop Prospect Park from her bill in the wake of opposition from Brooklyn officials.

At the community board level, much work remains to be done to build the momentum necessary to make change happen. Ken Coughlin, a long-time leader in the fight for a car-free Central Park, was enthused by CB 7′s support but said he wasn’t aware of any parallel effort in the other community boards surrounding the park.

The Upper West Side appears to be the epicenter of the movement for car-free parks. But for the campaign to succeed, more neighborhoods will have to join the fight.