Less than a week after Community Board 1 overwhelmingly disapproved a bike path cutting through City Hall Park, the Department of Transportation put up signs directing cyclists to use the path.
C.B. 1 rejected the bike path, which would connect the Hudson River Greenway to the Brooklyn Bridge via Warren St. and City Hall Park, after the Friends of City Hall Park made a case for keeping the park as is. Cyclists speeding along the park’s northern path would disrupt chess games and quiet lunches and could injure children, said Skip Blumberg, founder of the Friends.
At last week’s full board meeting, John Fratta, chairperson of the Seaport/Civic Center Committee, said the city had agreed to have cyclists dismount and walk their bikes through the park. Fratta said Bill Castro, the Borough of Manhattan Parks commissioner, told him that getting cyclists to walk their bikes wouldn’t be a problem. That commitment reassured some board members, but the majority still didn’t like the idea of the bike path.
However, this week, signs for the bike path went up in the park with no mention of the dismount proviso.
Seth Solomonow, a D.O.T. spokesperson, said cyclists will not be required to dismount, but will ride through the park along the same path pedestrians use.
“Shared spaces like this are found elsewhere in the city and in public areas around the country and the world,” Solomonow wrote in an e-mail. “We will monitor the changes and make any necessary adjustments, with feedback from the community.”
The D.O.T’s installation of bike signs in the park set off a flurry of e-mails between the C.B. 1 members and activists who wanted to keep the park cyclist-free.
“So much for grassroots democracy,” wrote Rick Landman, a member of the Friends in a mass email. “So much for the city trying to work with the community to find a better alternative…. It is a dumb idea when the park is crowded and an unsafe idea when the park is not crowded and the bikes will go faster.”
Those who replied to Landman’s e-mail called the D.O.T.’s action an outrage and suggested everything from calling 311 and writing letters to holding a protest at City Hall and filing a lawsuit.
Fratta saw the D.O.T.’s decision to go ahead with the bike path as another example of the agency not listening to the community.
“If they really wanted community input, they wouldn’t have come to us at the 11th hour,” Fratta said. “It’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”
–Julie Shapiro
