Streetsblog New York City

Central Park advocate Ken Coughlin tells us he’s spotted a traffic counting strip on the park loop, near Tavern on the Green.

The theory is that the city is gathering traffic data this summer as a baseline for a car-free park trial next year. That would jibe with recent remarks from Mayor Bloomberg and references to park data collection reported in the Times earlier this month.

Over the spring, supporters of a car-free trial lined up endorsements from every community board surrounding the park, and had hoped to free the park for recreational use from the July 4 weekend until Labor Day. The mayor was unmoved to implement a trial this year, but recently hinted that something might move forward once the city collected sufficient data.

“We are doing studies,” Bloomberg said on July 12. “Until we really can understand the traffic patterns and what effect it will have, we’re just not going to go and rush to do it.”

A request to DOT for confirmation that the city is indeed counting cars in the park was not immediately answered.

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.

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.

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.

A Central Park cyclist was killed at this pinch point on the 66th St. transverse in 2006. Photo: rusticumjudicium via Flickr

A plan to open Central Park to east-west bike traffic is poised to move forward, and proponents are encouraged to turn out Thursday night to voice their support.

Phase one of the Central Park Conservancy project, which took root last year, will convert two existing pedestrian paths for shared use in the northern area of the park, one around 103rd St. and one near the 97th St. transverse. If all goes well, the conservancy plans to revamp three additional paths to the south — one south of the 86th St. transverse, another near the 72nd St. transverse, and a third to the south of the Sheep Meadow, in the mid-60s. Only two of the trails, 103rd St. and 72nd St., will require engineering work beyond markings and signage.

The plan is not subject to community board approval, and though Community Board 8 does not border the part of the park involved in phase one, the conservancy will on Thursday night present its plans to the CB 8 parks committee. As Streetsblog readers know, CB 8 is not known for its hospitable attitude toward cyclists. As always, the more friendly faces at this meeting, the better.

The benefits of cycling as transportation being self-evident and all, talking points abound. But the primary reason these trails are necessary is that cyclists currently have no direct way to cross the park that is both legal and safe. The transverses at present are deadly by design, and the city has no plans for improvements that would prevent crashes like the one that killed a cyclist on the 66th St. transverse in 2006.

If you can make it, let CB 8 know that thousands of bike-riding park users need routes that will allow them to go east and west without breaking the law or risking their lives. Details on the meeting are here.

It may now be safe for cyclists who want to get some exercise — as opposed to waiting for lights to turn green or for officers to finish writing $270 tickets — to return to Central Park.

Weekend cyclists in Central Park. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

At a meeting Wednesday night with representatives of groups that use the park’s loop road, the Central Park Precinct’s Community Affairs Officer Richard Tombari strongly implied that the precinct’s enforcement approach has shifted from its previous and punitive zero-tolerance stance.

While stressing that “the law is the law” and that cyclists will never get an official announcement of relaxed enforcement, Tombari told meeting attendees that officers have “discretion” and that their focus is now on reckless cycling. He offered several examples of what might be considered reckless riding, including racing through a red light when pedestrians are in the crosswalk. None of his examples involved a cyclist riding through a red light when no one is attempting to cross. It was unclear whether officers’ use of discretion is limited to car-free hours or whether it extends to places and times when cars are in the park.

Tombari’s comments came during a meeting of the Central Park Conservancy’s Recreation Roundtable, a loosely structured advisory group that works with the Conservancy on recreation issues in the park. Supporting the suggestion of a more relaxed enforcement regime is the fact that none of the representatives of the cycling organizations in the room knew of a red-light summons having been issued to a cyclist in the park in the past several weeks. In addition, on April 6, citing a reliable source, the New York Cycle Club announced to its members that a pilot program is underway in which the police will not enforce red lights in Central Park between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. on weekdays, barring reckless or dangerous riding. At the same time, the lights on the loop road were permanently synchronized to 25 miles per hour, presumably as an accommodation to fast cyclists.

While it appears that cyclists will never get explicit confirmation from the NYPD, after Wednesday’s meeting it seems fair to conclude that the NYPD is now pursuing a more rational policy of focusing enforcement on reckless cycling and is unlikely to ticket cyclists riding through red lights at deserted intersections, at least when that section of the loop is car-free. A meeting attendee asked about trends in the enforcement of rules against counterflow riding on the drives and equipment violations, and Tombari said he would provide a response.

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Weekend cyclists in Central Park. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr.

Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7′s parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the traffic signals in the park, it’s not clear how to move forward. Some bright news is on the horizon for cyclists hoping to use Central Park for transportation, however: Two east-west routes through the northern end of the park should open this summer.

As of mid-March, the Central Park Precinct had handed out 230 tickets to cyclists in 2011. In comparison, they issued only 160 speeding tickets to motor vehicle drivers in all of 2010. The members of the two committees all agreed that the crackdown was negatively affecting Central Park. The central concern of the discussion, as presented by parks committee co-chair Klari Neuwelt, is that “there seems to have been a substantial decrease in the number of cyclists using Central Park for exercise.”

The NYPD’s new bike enforcement policy was uniformly perceived as excessive. Transportation committee co-chair Dan Zweig voiced the least critical view, thanking police for enforcing traffic laws against cyclists but adding, “I wish they had picked a better place than Central Park to start doing it.”

The widespread agreement, however, didn’t extend to the question of how to best facilitate cycling during car-free hours. The problem is that there isn’t an easy fix within reach.

The simplest solution would be for the police to return to the former status quo and stop making cyclists running red lights a top priority. Unfortunately, said Neuwelt, “we came to a dead end in that discussion. We’ve got nowhere to go with the police.”

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Via Andy Shen at NYVelocity, here’s the video of this week’s press conference and rally at City Hall, where Council Members Ydanis Rodriguez and Brad Lander kicked off the push to set traffic signals in Central Park and Prospect Park to flashing yellow during car-free hours. It’s encouraging to hear some clear thinking from Council members about traffic enforcement, and great to see the big crowd that turned out on a cold, rainy Wednesday for this event.

The NYPD has handed out 230 tickets to cyclists for running red lights in Central Park so far this year. And while police have apologized for most of the “speeding” citations they hit cyclists with earlier this week, Central Park precinct commander Philip Wishnia has given no indication that the red light tickets will stop.

Rodriguez introduced the bill on Wednesday, and word is that you’ll see it pick up more co-sponsors starting next week.

Video: Kevin Scott

NYPD resources at work: Police in Central Park during the early morning ticket blitz that nabbed cyclists for riding faster than 15 mph. Photo: Dave Chomowitz via Gothamist

NYPD’s apparent bid to criminalize recreational cycling in Central Park took another surreal turn this morning. One week after hundreds of people asked police to stop the irrational barrage of red light tickets for cyclists in the park, NYPD has apparently doubled down on its bike enforcement blitz. Cycling message boards lit up today with stories from an early morning sweep that caught about half a dozen people training in the park, where cops dished out hefty fines (reportedly as high as $350) for going faster than 15 mph.

The NYPD habit of picking off easy traffic enforcement targets under dubious pretenses, while leaving real problems unaddressed, seems to be holding steady. Gothamist’s John del Signore has some highlights:

Dave Jordan of the Century Road Club Association tells us that at least six or seven cyclists received speeding tickets this morning for biking over 15 mph (not the actual speed limit), and cyclist Dave Chomowicz, who took this photo, says, “They had a radar gun out. One or two riders in the picture and two of my teammates were ticketed, and some triathletes got tickets. I believe one of the cyclists was going 20 mph. I took the picture at 6:45 this morning and came back to the park for a while, after cars started coming in and the speed trap was gone. Cars were going far in excess of 15 mph. I saw cars going through red lights.”

Jordan believes six or seven cyclists were ticketed for speeding, and tells us one was slapped with fines totaling $350. “These are athletes and responsible people,” says Jordan. “The people they want are people who are doing this in the middle of the day on the weekends when the park is crowded and you want to do something with your kids and there’s some guy f-bombing as he’s biking around. The law states that we should yield to pedestrians. To enforce lights that have no purpose when there are no cars in the park just doesn’t make sense.”

The 15 mph rule, which doesn’t hold on city streets and apparently applies only to bikes inside the park, has been especially bewildering. The Central Park Conservancy website says the official speed limit for bikes and cars in the park is 25 mph. Some signs inside the park, impossible to read from the roadway, do indicate a 15 mph cap for cyclists. (Athletes can easily run faster than 15 mph, by the way, which is slower than the average speed of every Olympic medalist in the men’s 1,500 meter race going back to 1960.) The same signs imply that bicyclists don’t have to stop for full red light cycles, but should simply yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. Regardless, the rules only seem to apply if you’re on two wheels and you’re an easy mark. Central Park’s red light-running cabbies and speeding drivers can carry on.

In other news, NYPD issued no charges to either of the two drivers involved in yesterday’s noon-time Jackson Heights smash-up, in which one car careened into 82-year-old bystander Margaret Choborka, inflicting fatal head trauma.

Photo: Ken Coughlin

A crowd of 300 people, outraged at a police ticket blitz that threatens to effectively eliminate Central Park as a place of recreation for cyclists, ran into an unyielding blue wall at last night’s meeting of the Central Park Precinct’s community council. The precinct commander, Captain Philip Wishnia, offered no hope that his precinct’s enforcement of red-light laws at each of the loop road’s 47 traffic lights will abate, nor any assurances that his officers will exercise meaningful discretion.

Both Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer made brief statements at the meeting, urging exploration of a proposal to change the traffic lights to blinking yellow when cars are not in the park. Brewer, however, grasped the essence of the problem. Noting that she has had a bill before the council since 2006 calling for a trial closing of the park to cars, Brewer said, “Let’s get cars out of the park and change the current policy.”

Central Park Precinct Commander Philip Wishnia. Photo: NYPD

Wishnia initially tried to claim that the precinct’s sudden crackdown is in response to a “dramatic increase in incidents over the years,” an assertion that he failed to substantiate. When speaker after speaker challenged the claim, Wishnia would eventually fall back on the explanation that he is simply being instructed by higher-ups to enforce the law and has no flexibility. He suggested audience members talk to their legislators if they want a change.

Here are some further highlights, if you can call them that (many thanks to audience members Steve Vaccaro and Lisa Sladkus for their notes):

• Wishnia said that 230 summonses have been issued to cyclists so far this year, compared to 160 speeding summonses issued to drivers all of last year and 62 the prior year. Wishnia maintained the summonses given to cyclists are “not a lot” and that it “doesn’t amount to zero tolerance enforcement.”
• “We cyclists don’t understand how routine speeding by motorists in the park is condoned and even encouraged in this way, but you can’t allow a cyclist to ride through a red light in a deserted intersection in the park,” said Vaccaro. “How can an officer have the discretion to ignore one, but not the other?”
• Wishnia responded: “My officers have discretion. Not everyone who went through a light got a summons.” But when a cyclist asked under what circumstances he could go through a red light without getting a ticket, Wishnia replied, “I won’t tell you what your window of opportunity is.”

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