The Fight for Prospect Park's Roads

Gee, Bob Marvin, that's great that as a retired guy, you can run in the park when cars are not allowed. Or that before you retired, you ran at 6AM when there are scarcely any cars. Good for you. However, for many of the rest of us, 5pm-7pm is PRIME park time, especially in the warm weather, and cars on the drive, even if it's half the drive, are unpleasant and potentially dangerous.

There's a big, big difference in the experience of going into the park when cars are on the drive than when they are not. You have to venture much farther in to get away from automobile noise. Cars on the drives effectively shrink the park.

For goodness sake, all of the streets of our city are given over to cars. Is it so very much to ask that our parks be car-free???

Posted by: southbrooklyn at April 16, 2009 3:31 PM

Gee, Bob Marvin, why should I have to get up before dawn in order to enjoy Prospect Park without cars? And would you also suggest that all of the young children who enjoy the park with their parents in the hour before dinner also, instead, get up before dawn?

If you stopped all park drive drivers and asked them where they lived and where they were going, you would, I am certain, find out that 9 out of 10 have a time-competitive mass transit option. But instead, they prefer to drive. Fine. Let them drive, just not in the park.

The reality is that driving through the park saves a small amount of time for a relatively small number of people all driving alone in their cars, while at the same time diminishing the park for much larger numbers of people out for exercise and enjoyment in one of the few green spaces we city folk have easy access to.

Sorry, Bob, I just don't find it all emoticon-amusing.

Posted by: southbrooklyn at April 16, 2009 9:42 PM

You are entirely missing the point when you say that the park drive is the least attractive part park. I feel you are being deliberately obtuse.

The Park Drives are THE logical place for many thousands of parents to take their children to learn how to ride a bike. But NOT between 5 and 7pm. I guess the need of a few people to drive through the park takes precedence over teaching children to ride bikes. Anyone who would like to teach their kid to ride a bike early on a summer evening will just have to wait until the weekend.

Rigidly ideological? What exactly is ideological about my argument that city parks should be protected green space and not a way for people to shave five minutes off their car commute, especially when most of those people drive ALONE in their cars and could easily take mass transit. Is it rigidly ideological to argue that precious public resources like park space be used to benefit the largest number of the public?? Am I possessed of some bizarre idea here?

I would say instead that those who are enthrall to the automobile are the ones with a rigid point of view.

The ballfields are the logical place for children to play ball. But to get there, between 5pm and 7pm, they have to cross the park drives, where people ALWAYS speed.

Prospect Park is the logical place to retreat from automobile noise. But to get away from automobile noise during the time the drives are open to traffic, one has to walk twice as far into the park.

Please try this experiment, Bob. Walk into Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza at 11am on a beautiful summer day. Go in under one of the arches to the beginning of the Long Meadow. Notice how quickly the city falls away and how peaceful it is.

Then take the exact same walk at 5:30 pm. Tell me how far you have to go before you can't hear cars any more.

I think you'll see what I mean about how cars in the park damage the park experience and make the park a much smaller green respite.

Posted by: southbrooklyn at April 18, 2009 10:24 AM