Our Central Park Wishlist: Perimeter and Transverse Bike Lanes, Fewer Cars and — Yes — Some Speed Limits

For all our Central Park coverage, click here.

After two people died in less than two weeks in crashes in Central Park, Streetsblog launched “Central Park Week,” during which our reporters fanned across the 843-acre greenspace and its perimeter, and spoke to members of every possible constituency of park user as well as a rep from the foundation that operates the park.

One thing is clear: Central Park is in high demand, and the city’s goal should be to make it work better — and safer — for everyone.

The people we spoke to all agreed that it was long past time for the city to install protected bike lanes on streets around and through the park, as it has done at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Unlike that Olmsted and Vaux-designed park, Central Park only has a single uni-diretional bike lane on a perimeter street.

In the seven years since the Department of Transportation cerated the Central Park West bike lane, DOT has shown zero urgency to give non-recreational cyclists safety routes through and around the park. Central Park South, 110th Street and Fifth Avenue are treacherous for cyclists and substandard for pedestrians, as Streetsblog reporters Dave Colon and Henry Beebe-Center documented in print and on video this week.

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Beebe-Center also joined Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman for a video trip through one of the park’s transverses. The transverses could provide a safe, crosstown route for cyclists and reduce crowding in the park, if the DOT simply followed the recommendations of a Central Park Conservancy study that current DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn worked on as a consultant for TYLin back in 2024.

As tensions have risen in recent weeks, all the city has done is a polarizing redesign of the drives and a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit stuck in legal limbo due to a lawsuit by the New York Cycle Club.

Speaking of the New York Cycle Club, its leaders advocate a decent compromise: Enact a 15-mph speed limit, but set aside certain hours for higher speed “training.” How that speed limit could be enforced remains an open question — we don’t see many cyclists getting pulled over for violating the 15-mph e-bike speed limit, for example. A complete ban on e-bikes in the park is a non-starter as long as the streets around the park remain unsafe for cyclists.

Also on our wishlist: More signage and more communication with tourists and members of the public about how to interact with the drives and other mixed-use paths in the park as a pedestrian or cyclist. We saw a lot of tourists riding the wrong way or in the wrong path.

Finally, the city should do more to keep cars out of the park. Many of the cars we saw in the park during “Central Park Week” belonged to NYPD, the Parks Department, city contractors or their employees. Sure, NYPD may need few cars in the park, but wouldn’t cops be better off operating at the same level as the “street” activity they’re policing — i.e. on bikes? The same idea applies to Parks, which could use smaller trucks, go-carts or e-cargo bikes for hauling goods and waste. The status quo of illegal parking, super speeding and placard abuse makes the park worse. And private Police and Parks employees’ cars should get off the Bridle Path by the Central Park Precinct.

That’s our call-to-action, but not our vibe. After spending a week looking for unbridled tension over the “Wild West” conditions inside Central Park, we actually found something else: Central Park remains awesome.

As Streetsblog Engagement Editor Emily Lipstein wrote so elegantly on our liveblog, “Everyone should be able to recreate in Central Park and enjoy this gem we’re lucky enough to have. But that can only happen if we agree that it does, rightfully, belong to everyone.”

Or, as Kuntzman added, “I get that there are conflicts between cyclists, horses, pedicab drivers, pedestrians, runners and tourists on the Central Park Drives … but lest we forget: Central Park is freakin’ awesome! Let’s set aside the constant drumbeat of negativity that living in New York produces in our brains and acknowledge how lucky we are that this park is as great as it is.”

Here’s a rundown of all our Central Park Week coverage — but stayed tuned for more of the fruits of our week-long focus on the world’s most famous park. And while you’re at it, why not click here to send this list of demands to Mayor Mamdani?