Car-Free Parks

Support for a car-free Central Park trial is gaining momentum, with three additional community board nods.

Despite the impressive shows of support from three Manhattan community boards over the last two weeks, the effort to take cars off of the Central Park loop for a summer-long trial hit a major snag last night. In a resounding vote of two to one with two abstentions, the transportation committee of CB 9 voted against the car-free trial.

The momentum is growing for a summer-long trial of a car-free Central Park.

Last night's unanimous votes in support of a summer-long car-free Central Park by Manhattan Community Board 7's parks and transportation committees moved the ball forward for advocates of car-free parks. With no movement at the mayoral level on the issue, any successful push will have to come from the bottom up. Similar statements of community support will be needed from more than one neighborhood.

Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced legislation today that would restore Central and Prospect Parks to their original car-free status.

Major crimes in Central Park may be up by 50 percent, but that hasn't stopped significant resources from being spent on the ongoing NYPD crackdown targeting recreational cyclists in the park. Precinct officers are stopping cyclists for a variety of infractions, including spot equipment checks for missing bells and lights, but most notoriously are handing out $270 tickets to riders who roll through any of the loop drive's 47 traffic signals, even if the only other living being in sight is a squirrel.

In what's shaping up to be a yearly tradition, car-free hours in Central Park have been cut back for the holiday season. Each weekday this month, on the southeast corner of the park drive, the park's pedestrians, joggers, cyclists, and dog-walkers have three fewer hours of quiet and safety.

Central Park Conservancy head Douglas Blonsky wants his park to get a lot more bike-friendly, he revealed at a meeting of Manhattan's Community Board 7's parks committee last night. Not only is he working to create shared use paths that would allow cyclists to cross the park east-west safely and legally, he repeatedly announced his support for removing vehicular traffic from Central Park entirely.

The parks department will hold a hearing Friday on plans to clamp down on what it sees as an unnecessary, untamed incursion into some of the city's most vaunted public spaces.