The city's most-fervent anti-cycling activists failed on Wednesday night to convince a notoriously anti-bike Upper East Side community board to reject a common-sense safety redesign of Central Park's roadways in a way that would actually reduce bike and pedestrian conflicts.
Manhattan Community Board 8's Parks and Transportation Committee's 10-to-five vote in favor of the Central Park Conservancy's proposal to bring the design of the park drive in line with that of Prospect Park in Brooklyn and add a protected bike lane to at least one park transverse.
The latter proposal may actually get the supposedly rogue cyclists out of the park by providing a safe crosstown route that bypasses the park's recreational space. But public speakers from the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance and their allies on the board dismissed that — using their speaking time to rail against "lawless" cyclists, electric or otherwise, downplaying the dangers cars and accuse the conservancy of being beholden to "the bike lobby."
"They have proven themselves to be lawless — and I’m talking all races, colors, creeds, not just the deliveristas," E. 72nd Street resident Kathy Brady said at Wednesday night's marathon meeting. “I have never been afraid of cars in New York City. I used to walk in traffic, out in traffic without any fear whatsoever.
“The tech bros own the city and they seem to be owning the park, we can’t let that happen," Brady added.
The proposal by the Central Park Conservancy seeks to better organize the road inside the park for cyclists, pedestrians, and people riding faster devices like e-bikes and other micromobility. The plan also suggests improving bike paths around the park's edges while converting one of its transverses into a bike path.
However, following a presentation of the project by the conservancy's Vice President for Government Relations David Saltonstall, the three-hour-plus meeting devolved into a classic Upper East Side gripe session, with some residents of the upper crust neighborhood slamming e-bikers and regular cyclists, often without facts to back up their arguments.
"My family won’t even walk with me through the park," said Community Board 8 member Alida Camp, "because I rail at bike riders that are on the pedestrian pathways, that use the loop around the Great Lawn, ... as though there was no impediment to however fast they would like to go."
The city has allowed electric bikes and micro-mobility devices on its park drives since 2023, as part of a pilot program, which it renewed after the first year and is currently slated to run out at the end of May.
In October, the conservancy laid out a long-anticipated study to update the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park drives, whose current layout dates back to when cars were allowed in the iconic green space — a practice halted by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2018 after generations of advocates fought for a car-free park.
Since then, the paths have become highly popular with pedestrians, cyclists, e-bike riders, delivery workers, micromobility users, and pedicab operators; the park's current road layout no longer meets the moment.
The redesign would restripe the drives to have clear sections for pedestrians, cyclists and another for e-bikes and other faster mobility devices. The city could also raise pedestrian crossings, while replacing leftover traffic lights with signals more suited for the current modes of transportation.
"Our determination was to not only give them [e-bike riders] a discrete lane, but to keep them as far away from pedestrians as possible and create a sort of separation ... which is actually a concept that Olmsted talked about in designing the park," Saltonstall said.
The design replaces the sidewalks of the 86th Street transverse with protected bike lanes, providing a desperately needed crosstown route that would also divert many of the current cycling trips further away from recreational park goers.
It was on a park transverse where beloved doctor Daniel Cammerman was killed in 2019, starting the latest impetus for crosstown bike routes that don't mix cyclists with pedestrians.
Nonetheless, the uptown community board infamously struggled to get behind basic bike lane infrastructure, such as the years-long fight to get some crosstown painted lanes, which played out in kvetch sessions that bordered on performance art.
The antis fail
The E-Vehicle Safety Alliance purports to support street safety and claims to have nothing against non-electric bicycles, but its members have repeatedly dismissed protected bike lanes and other street safety measures such as congestion pricing or road diets.
On Wednesday, supporters showed up in force to urge the non-profit conservancy to demand the city ban e-bikes in parks. The group's leaders alleged that the conservancy had conspired with "the bike lobby" in its decision to refrain from doing so.
"The Parks and the conservancy both continued to refuse to say exactly which e-mail list they used to solicit input — and I suspect it’s probably the bike lobby," said East Sider Andrew Fine, who sits on EVSA's steering committee.
Fine falsely claimed the Central Park Conservancy spent $1 million on the study and questioned whether it got buy-in from the New York Road Runners, which organizes the annual New York City Marathon that ends in the park.
The conservancy's rep at the meeting slammed Fine for "making up" his claims. The Road Runners were "wildly enthusiastic" about the proposal, he said.
"I mean, I don’t really know where to begin," said Saltonsall. "Mr. Fine said we spent a million dollars on this project; we spent a quarter of that. I don’t know where he’s getting that number. I think he’s making it up."
The conservancy's redesign of the park drive and 86th Street transverse will begin implementation this spring, according to Saltonstall.
Not everyone bought into the anti-e-bike hate. One local said the city needs to give more space to people on two wheels, many of whom ferry deliveries to well-heeled residents under intense time pressure in a city dominated by cars.
"To try to have to navigate that situation to get to the impatient customer — which might include a few of you here, once in a while — and to get back to fulfill another other, you know, an impatient employer at the other end, he’s got a really really tough job," said David Vassar. "Before we ban e-bikers from Central Park, create more public safe space on our streets, protected bike lanes, wider bike lanes for all of us who are on two wheels."
The board's initial proposed resolution called on the conservancy to push the city to ban e-bikes from parks entirely. But Saltonstall said it wouldn't be the organization's place to advance that cause.
"At the end of the day, we manage Central Park under a contract with the city and we are their employees," he said.
The rep reminded the civic group that the park's 19th-century design always envisioned catering to fast transportation on its roadways.
"If we’re looking at the long arc of the park, 100 years ago, there were teams of horses on the drives with carriages on them, they were always designed as the place for faster-moving things going fast," he said.
And for all the doom and gloom, Saltonstall reminded longtimers that the park's true dark days were in the 1970s and '80s.
"It was not a sanctuary, it was a dustbowl, there were over 1,000 crimes in the park every year," he said. "Last year there were 27 major crimes in the park."
Board member Sebastian Hallum Clarke put forth a substitute resolution in support of the conservancy's plans, with a reminder that they had opposed e-bikes in the parks in the past. That's the proposal that passed overwhelmingly.
"If we’re trying to make the park safer, given what is within control of the conservancy … it looks like this is a great plan to be separating out people on foot, slow wheeled vehicles, faster wheeled vehicles," Clarke said.
