The Fight for Prospect Park's Roads
When new driving restrictions in Prospect Park go into effect on April 27, CB 7 won’t be cheering. The board started making noise last year when the plan was floated, agitating for an Environmental Impact Study before any changes were made. Now, according to the Brooklyn Paper, it’s a matter of pride: “No one was…
When new driving restrictions in Prospect Park go into effect on April 27, CB 7 won’t be cheering. The board started making noise last year when the plan was floated, agitating for an Environmental Impact Study before any changes were made. Now, according to the Brooklyn Paper, it’s a matter of pride: “No one was contacted on this before it was a done deal,” said CB7 District Manager Jeremy Laufer. Opponents fear that Park Circle will be overwhelmed by the rerouted cars, a charge both DOT and TA pooh-pooh.
Well, clearly we’ll never agree about this issue, No hard feelings on my part. FWIW I haven’t driven in the park since the southern part of the drive was closed in the PM rush hour between park circle and Lincoln road–it no longer makes sense for me–I imagine you’d say it never made sense–we’ll have to disagree (but you might want to consider that their just MIGHT be a difference between disagreeing with your point of view and being “deliberately obtuse”.
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.
“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?”
Surely the park drive is the least attractive part of PP for parents and children to enjoy.
No more than I find your self-righteousness amusing, S. Bklyn. Your posts are usually well reasoned, but you obviously have a rigidly fixed ideological take on this issue. We’ll just have to disagree.
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.
Actually Ditmas, runners and stroller pushers don’t have to obey the signals in the park, but bikers do, at least technically. I wouldn’t be especially insistent about that, but the self righteous idiot cyclists who yell at pedestrians they menace are clearly in the wrong.
Gee southbrooklyn, don’t sleep so late, running before dawn and seeing the Sun come up as you finish is great 🙂
I see how this works…. if DOT changes traffic patterns in my neighborhood without consultation its good to reduce traffic lanes, but when they impose something on you, you are up in arms.
Without discussing the merit of this proposal, can we at least agree on the value of communication by government agencies?
I was at that meeting on Park Circle in February and no one from DOT mentioned this at all, not even as a remote possibility. That’s what upset me.
Save Windsor Terrace!
CG – read my second paragraph
sorry, but if you drive in randomville, Iowa – people are a bit slower(driving that is…) and seem to resepct or at least try to respect the rules of the road
last time I checked – there really aren’t any speed limits(that people respect) on most highways in Europe
and I thought I was going to lose my life MANY times when I visited Paris while on foot and as a passenger!
I do agree that there seems to be a propensity of IDIOTS that do turn from that left lane going right…