Sneak Preview: Stringer’s “Blueway Plan” for East River Greenway

The East River Blueway plan proposes an elevated greenway to improve connections for cyclists and pedestrians around the ConEd plant at 14th Street. Image: WXY architecture + urban design

Compared to its West Side counterpart, the East River Greenway needs some help. It could serve as a continuous waterfront park and a trunk route for bicycling on the East Side, but it’s hampered by missing links, poor maintenance, and the barrier created by the FDR Drive. Today at his State of the Borough address, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is unveiling the East River Blueway Plan, laying out a vision for the park from the Brooklyn Bridge to 38th Street.

Among the plan’s recommendations: replacing a pinch point on the greenway — the section shoehorned between speeding traffic and the ConEd plant at 15th Street — with an elevated path rising above the FDR Drive.

By the ConEd plant at 15th Street, the East Side greenway is an ugly, five-foot wide path where cyclists can't pass each other comfortably. Photo: Kim Martineau

A big-ticket item like the new bridge won’t be cheap, however, and so far there is no proposal for how to fund it. Stringer has pledged $3.5 million to construct marshland included in the plan, according to the Times.

The Blueway Plan, organized in 2011 by Stringer and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh in partnership with the Lower East Side Ecology Center and Community Boards 3 and 6, is supported by a state grant dedicated to waterfront revitalization. A draft version from summer 2012 [PDF] identified neighborhood access and waterfront continuity as two of the project’s five goals, and listed places where park access across FDR Drive could be improved.

To the north, a 2011 deal with the United Nations has cleared the way for a greenway connection between 38th and 60th Streets, which would bridge the longest gap on the East Side.

Stringer’s final State of the Borough speech, where the plan will be unveiled, is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The bridge would deck over the FDR Drive at the pinch point. Image: WXY architecture + urban design

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