Lining a Central Park roadway near West 72nd Street, a group of crash victims and pedestrian-safety advocates spent Tuesday afternoon urging cyclists to stop at the crosswalk. Some riders did, and others sailed right through, according to WOR. The group’s bigger demand is to get e-bikes and e-scooters out of the park entirely.
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The rally was organized by the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance. Its co-founder, Janet Schroeder, said her members have “absolutely had it,” according to ABC7, and argued that the city’s redesign of the park’s six-mile loop has effectively turned it into an e-bike “super highway.”“People are hit almost every day,” Schroeder told the New York Daily News, adding that riders routinely run the stop sign and flashing light at the 72nd Street crossing. “We are David fighting against Goliath,” she told Our Town.
One of the most personal accounts came from Brandi Wiltse. Her aunt, Upper West Sider Jean Kotler, was jogging at West Drive and 64th Street on July 7 when an e-bike rider hit her, leaving her with a traumatic brain injury. Wiltse told ABC7 that her aunt now has trouble with memory and ordinary daily tasks. She wants riders to be required to carry insurance so injured people and their families have somewhere to turn.
ABC7 reported that, according to the NYPD, there had been 26 crashes involving e-bikes and e-scooters in Central Park this year as of October 18.
The rally came about a month after Richie O’Brien, 41, was fatally struck by a cyclist on East Drive at 84th Street on September 23. Before this fall, no pedestrian had been killed by a cyclist in the park since 2014, the Daily News reported.
Some protesters say they’ve changed how they use the park. One Upper West Side woman told Our Town she had stopped training for a marathon there because of fast-moving cyclists.
The group is backing Intro. 377, a bill introduced in January by Queens Council Member Vickie Paladino that would ban e-bikes and e-scooters from every city park, according to the City Council. It has 14 sponsors, including Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer. Brewer told the Daily News she doesn’t expect the bill to go anywhere, and that the real answer is more police and much tighter enforcement.
Advocates are also pushing Priscilla’s Law, which would require e-bikes and e-scooters to be registered and display a visible rear license plate. A version of it did not pass in the Council’s last session.
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Meanwhile, the Council has held a hearing on a package of e-bike safety bills. Speaker Julie Menin supports one of them, which would let enforcement agents check e-vehicles’ speed on a dynamometer and seize illegal ones on the spot, the Daily News reported. No vote has been scheduled.The city is defending its approach. NYC Parks said it is committed to making park drives and greenways safer for everyone, whether they are walking, cycling or riding a legal micromobility device, and that reckless riding is never allowed. A spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani told the Daily News that DOT is working with the Central Park Conservancy and Parks to monitor the drives and make safety adjustments. The Conservancy said the redesign was meant to give pedestrians and cyclists clearly marked spaces of their own, and declined to comment further.
Transportation officials have stood by the overhaul before. When the same group rallied last fall, DOT told amNewYork it had seen no increase in reported pedestrian injuries during the transition and described its early observations as “promising trends.”
The fight over who belongs on the park’s drives isn’t new. The city has already lowered the loop’s speed limit to 15 mph, a change that drew a lawsuit from the city’s oldest cycling club.
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