Car-Free Prospect Park? Blech!
Well, that’s not exactly the position of Community Boards 7 and 14, but they do have some reservations about the three-month trial of a car-free zone in Prospect Park. Fearful that neighborhood streets will clog with traffic if cars are turned out from the park’s circular drive, they’re asking for an environmental impact statement to…
Well, that’s not exactly the position of Community Boards 7 and 14, but they do have some reservations about the three-month trial of a car-free zone in Prospect Park. Fearful that neighborhood streets will clog with traffic if cars are turned out from the park’s circular drive, they’re asking for an environmental impact statement to be prepared. “A car-free park ‘could have a major environmental impact,'” said Assemblyman Jim Brennan at a press conference yesterday. According to Streetsblog, “he co-signed a letter with the CB chairs asking DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan for the EIS.” They prefer that the park not be closed to traffic, even for a trial period. Needless to say, this isn’t sitting well with bike advocates, including Transportation Alternatives, which has been working to rid the park of cars for many years; the move by Brennan et al also comes on the heels of a petition in favor of the car-free park signed by 10,000 that was delivered to City Hall two weeks ago. This move brought out the warm and fuzzy side of CB7’s Randy Peers: “”We abhor the tactics of the bicycle advocacy group,” he said.
Foes Car-Free Prospect Park Trial Demand EIS [Streetsblog]
Photo from A Year in the Park.
Parks are for people, yes, but too many of those people have cars, big cars, and drive them even when there’s perfectly acceptable public transportation available. Consequently, if you close the park at rush hours, the streets, especially Prospect Park Southwest, clog up, drivers become cranky and impatient with traffic lights, pedestrians outside the park are endangered, buses are slowed up and homeowners are subjected to hell–cars, horns, pollution. Opening the park to cars during rush hours makes our neighborhood more livable.
wow, i just realized i snarked in response to a 6-month-old post. joke’s on me!
why is brenda a psychopath for complaining about people who clog up bike lanes? don’t walk in the frigging bike lane.
were you molested by a bicycle as a child or something?
truer words were never spoken, cmu. Well…ok, maybe there are, but thanks for the splash of cold water. Now if we can all just avoid getting exterminated for falling outside poley’s favorite demographic and and avoid getting killed by bike psychopath brenda we’ll be fine.
No, I see nothing wrong with being tolerant.
So many of you here take exception to others: brenda (cylist) against the joggers (“slam on the brakes” to avoid a ped…don’t you have eyes to see them in advance?); blackstoner (?) against the occasional car (let’s keep the illegality out of it, that’s not what I;m talking about); bikecommuter against cars and peds; pedestrians against dangerous cyclists; all non-car people against cars; and no doubt car drivers against stupid cyclists who run red lights or whatever.
Don’t you all see that it’s so easy to demonize the others? It’s not ALL car drivers who’re maniacs, or ALL cyclists who threaten peds, or vice-versa. It’s a small minority of each, most people are courteous to others, and most don’t deliberately hit others.
But you wouldn’t know it reading these comments.
Polemicist, for someone who wants to house the world in high density buildings for the good of mankind and growth of the city, you certainly have a list of the worthy who are eligible for your brave new world. Maybe that’s how your future would work – because you obviously reject anyone over 30, the overweight, and many, many other “rejects” from past posts. So there really won’t be that many people worthy of living in your New York.
You remind me of that late ’70’s movie called Logan’s Run, where everyone in this perfect future society was beautiful and young, and when you reached 30, they killed you, because they figured out there weren’t enough resources for everyone. Of course no one knew that was their fate, but, details. Rent it sometime, you’ll love it.
Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the park and its traffic patterns to make an informed comment about cars, pedestrians and bikers. Most of us are one or more of these, seems like a happy medium can be found somewhere.
Thank you Denton for your view on the physics of traffic. All I can say is there are a h*ll of a lot more cars going a h*ll of a lot faster. Same can be said for 8th ave.
Commuters try to get from Grand Army Plaza to 15th street circle as fast as they can, and it’s like drag racing with trying to beat the timing of the lights.
“I will have to say, as someone who grew up on prospect park west, there has been an ever increasing volume of traffic, at ever increasing speeds. So I empathize with the concern that closing park will only re-route rush hour commuters on already clogged roads.”
PPW, that kinda doesn’t make sense. Hard to increase the speed of traffic as well as the volume. More traffic would solve the speed problem, tho admittedly there are better ways to accomplish that.
I cycle through Prospect Park most days, commuting to work. Getting into the park by bike is really dangerous at rush hour. The entrance approaches at all the traffic circles at the park edges need to be redesigned. But the dangers of rush hour traffic aren’t only to entering cyclists. I enter the park from Grand Army Plaza, during the early evening while cars are still permitted. When the traffic lights change there’s a rush of cars through, then a longish time during which no cars enter. During this no-traffic time pedestrians wander all over the park entrance road. The road just inside the park is hidden from view of entering traffic, and people at this after work time seem unaware that with the changing lights cars will again come speeding through. There tend to be a lot of people around this space – it seems to be a gathering place for after work running and cycling groups. It’s only a matter of time before an unwary pedestrian gets hit by a car. I look forward to the car free trial – hopefully it will encourage the permanent banning of cars from the park.