Eyes On The Street: Central Park is Long Overdue for Protected Bike Lanes Around Its Perimeter
Central Park West protected bike lane is the kind of success the Department of Transportation should brag about every single day. And as car-free Central Park gets more and more crowded with pedestrians and cyclists, the seven-year-old CPW bike lane sticks out as the one and only safe route for cyclists around the perimeter of the park.
Streetsblog took a ride around Central Park last week — experiencing the comfort of the the north-bound CPW bike lane, and discomfort of everywhere else.
Trying to get around any other part of the park opens cyclists up to the elements, and danger. DOT has spent the last 15 years installing protected bike lanes along all but one perimeter road of Prospect Park, the city’s other crown jewel Olmsted and Vaux park. For some reason it has neglected to give Central Park the same common sense treatment.
Allow us to compare and contrast:
Central Park West
Central Park West has had a one-way protected bike lane running from Columbus Circle to Central Park North since it was finished in early 2020.
The northbound lane replaced a painted bike lane that proved no protection at all when a garbage truck driver struck and killed Australian tourist Madison Lyden in 2018 as she maneuvered around a taxi whose driver had stopped in the unprotected bike lane.
The bike lane that went in as a result of that tragedy ensured that cyclists on the west side of the park headed north could do so safely without riding against traffic inside Central Park, where West Drive goes south. Put simply, the lane works. Cyclists don’t need to use the sidewalk as a refuge, there’s enough room for faster cyclists to pass tourists doodling on Citi Bikes and everyone is much safer.
Between 2015 and 2019, there were 1,851 crashes on Central Park West, resulting in one death and 386 injuries. But between 2021 and 2025, the number of crashes dropped 70 percent to 588, along with three deaths and 324 injuries.
But the lack of safe routes heading south next to the park does result in a lot of cyclists riding against traffic in the actual bike lane. The lane is wide enough for it in some place, and not to much in others:
At the southern terminus of the bike lanes, at W. 62md Street, Streetsblog found painted sidewalk space filled with the illegally parked cars belonging NYPD officers (or self-professed officers) using department insignia to get away with parking in pedestrian zones.
One of the cars, an Audi, had nine school zone speeding violations and no front plate, which is against the law for cars registered in the Empire State.
Central Park North
Leave Central Park West, though, and your bike trip is not going to be fun or easy.
Cyclists going east on Central Park North (110th Street) at least have an unprotected bike lane for the half-mile or so between the west and east side of the park — one that exposes them to traffic of all sizes:
As with Central Park West, the one-way bike lane invites people to ride against traffic — and in a much smaller space than the CPW protected bike lane. (Though like Central Park, the complementary westbound drive within the park absorbs some of that contraflow bike traffic.)
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue, the eastern perimeter of Central Park, is hostile to cyclists in a way that few streets in Manhattan still are at this point in the city’s progress towards more livable streets.
The lack of a painted or protected bike lane doesn’t mean that no one bikes on Fifth Avenue — far from it.
When Streetsblog visited, the road had working cyclists pulling trailers, youthful Citi Bike riders, food deliveristas and parents biking with kids.
Without a bike lane, all of those people had to navigate two lanes of car and truck traffic and a bus lane, which works so well that buses bear down on you if you ride your bike in it. It’s enough to push some cyclists to simply ride on the sidewalk.
By raw numbers, Fifth Avenue had fewer crashes between 2021 and 2025 than Central Park West, a total of 429 compared to 588 on CPW. But Fifth Avenue is also only about 40-feet wide compared to Central Park West, which is 63-feet wide and has two-way traffic — factors that likely compound the metrics across the park.
Central Park South
If you want a reminder of what Central Park West used to be like before the city actually took some life saving action on the street, you can always ride your bike onto Central Park South: Every inch of 59th Street between Grand Army Plaza and Columbus Circle, save for a short horses-only lane, is dedicated to moving or storing motor vehicles — right outside the main entrance to the most famous park in the world.
Even biking alongside the park, you are going to need to be keep watch for drivers making illegal U-turns at high speed, as we experienced for ourselves. See below. A truly unpleasant way to spend any amount of time.
The obvious fix
None of this is news, of course. From the moment seven years ago when DOT announced the Central Park West bike lane would be one-way, people cricized the city for not considering the need for a safe southbound route.
DOT also has a template for how to surround a landmarked park with protected bike lanes in Prospect Park. Prospect Park West and Flatbush Avenue both have two-way protected bike lanes to cover the east and west side of the Brooklyn jewel, and Parkside Avenue is on the southernmost point. Come Fall 2027, when DOT wraps up the Ocean Avenue protected bike lane, the city will will just Prospect Park Southwest left to surround the entire park.
The Central Park Conservancy has even called on the city to do more: The conservancy’s 2024 recommendations for improving cyclist and pedestrian safety in the park called for working with city agencies to redesign the streets around the park, on the east side in particular.
Two years later nothing has changed on those streets. Reached for comment, DOT did at least signal some interest in finally taking action.
“New Yorkers deserve a thoughtfully planned bike network to safely navigate our streets on two wheels,” said agency spokesperson Will Livingston said in a statement. “We are exploring possibilities to improve bike connections to and around the park. We look forward to discussing projects that we develop with the public.”
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