Photo: Scarlet Sappho / Flickr
Barbara Adler is a longtime member of Community Board 7 and is currently co-chair of the Parks and Environment Committee. She was the founding executive director of the Columbus Avenue BID from 1999-2020. She has three kids, now grown, who were all raised in Central Park.
On January 12th at 6:30 PM, Community Board 7’s Parks & Environment Committee, together with our Transportation Committee, will hold a public hearing on pedestrian safety while crossing the Central Park Drives. As co-chair of our Parks & Environment Committee, we have gotten more requests to hold this forum for people to speak and express their concerns than any other item over the years. There are many unanswered questions to date, but we decided to move forward with our own public hearing to give people a chance to hear from the planners and experts and to speak out now on the newly configured park drives.
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Michael Flynn has just been appointed the new Commissioner of DOT. He worked in the Bloomberg administration with bikes, bike lanes and street safety. As the newly appointed DOT Commissioner under Mayor Mamdani, he is expected to focus on the same, including e-bikes, commercial e-bikes and bike lane expansion, while balancing street and pedestrian safety, and other items like free and faster buses.Former Council Member from the Upper East Side Julie Menin has just been named the Speaker of the City Council. She has signed onto a bill before the council (Intro 0060) prohibiting the operation of electric scooters and bicycles with electric assist in the parks. However, this bill to date has gotten just 20 sponsors, and 26 are needed for passage, or 33 if necessary to overcome a mayoral veto. Speaker Menin has also called for mandatory licensing on all e-bikes.
Additionally, NYC has just lowered the speed limit in the parks from 20 mph to 15 mph. The big question on many park users’ minds is how enforcement be accomplished. In the past it hasn’t been able to accomplish its goal.
This summer, I went to a meeting regarding usage on the Central Park Drives, which was held at the Central Park Police Precinct. The room was filled to capacity, with a large overflow crowd outside straining to hear. There were many voices heard asking to ban e-bikes from the park, keep the horses in the park and get rid of the e-bikes. Nevertheless, the plans for the Central Park drives have moved ahead regardless and are still expected to undergo more changes. Pedestrians don’t feel safe crossing the drives because bikes, e-bikes and other micromobility devices don’t stop at the crosswalks.
Clearly, this is a very complicated issue, and many factors are involved. Pedestrians primarily want e-bikes banned, which they see as a hazard, while bikers of all types use the park drives for transportation, including commercial e-bikes trying to get from point A to B in the shortest amount of time, and would consider it a huge blow if the pilot program allowing e-bikes and other micromobility vehicles disappeared.
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In 2024, the Central Park Conservancy hired Sam Schwartz, the transportation guru, to study the drives, which is basically a continuous loop around the park, from 59th Street to 110th Street. The 77-page study noted some facts, and made recommendations for improvements, both mid-term and long-term. Some of those have already been implemented, but many question how successful they’ve been. Below I’ve noted some of the interesting details from the study:There are 45 million people who use the park each year. 93% of users on the drives are pedestrians or cyclists, including service vehicles and other micromobility vehicles, pedicabs and horse carriages. Of those, 45% are cyclists (including e-vehicles), 3% are pedicabs, and 3% are other micromobility devices.  61%are pedestrians, who sometimes feel unsafe, primarily crossing the drives. There are over 50 traffic lights in the park, from when cars were allowed on the drives, and many are now covered with burlap or have been replaced with flashing yellow lights and signage. Data doesn’t seem to be available past 2022, but from 2018 to 2022, there were 522 collisions, 472 with injuries and one fatality. [Research on the internet shows that accidents in the park have increased since 2022, with one fatality in 2025].
Recommendations in the Sam Schwartz study include both mid-term and longer-term recommendations. The mid-term recommendations include removing vehicular traffic signals and replacing them with signals for bikers and pedestrians, while also exploring a protected bike lane on the 86th Street transverse. Longer-term recommendations include developing a crosswalk-toolkit and analysis of every crosswalk in the park (I believe there are 53); enhancing pedestrian zones using textured, colored surfaces to serve as visual and physical cues, possible rumble strips, tabletop crosswalks, (widely used in Europe and known to be safest for pedestrians but disliked by bikers), textured surface warning strips, hi-visibility artwork, neckdowns and markings.
At our January 12th meeting, experts will speak briefly to update us on the latest plans for the Central Park Drives, and then we will open the floor to anyone who wishes to speak on the subject, limited to 1-2 minutes, depending on the number of speakers. The meeting will be held at our board office at 250 West 87th Street, 2nd floor or online at this link.
If you would like to sign up to speak online, please sign up here.
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