Cyclists, CB1 at Odds Over City Hall Park Bike Path

By Matt Dunning
POSTED JUNE 19, 2009

Below Canal Street, where the grid ends and the streets seem to develop a mind of their own, cyclists navigate some of New York’s busiest and most treacherous intersections. So when the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) in June unveiled plans to install a bicycle path connecting Hudson River Park to the Brooklyn Bridge via Warren Street and City Hall Park, cyclists in Lower Manhattan said it was a great idea, but scoffed when they found out that Community Board 1 (CB1) members want riders to get off their bikes and walk them across the part of the path that cuts through the park.

“There’s no advantage,” said Stuyvesant High School junior Jack Flemming, who rides his bike to school most days and often returns home to the Lower East Side via Chambers Street.

According to the DOT, Chambers Street has the most bike accidents of any cross street between Worth and Barclay. On June 10, DOT Director of Bicycle and Pedestrian Programs Ryan Russo pitched the proposed bike path to CB1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee. The committee approved the plan, but not before attaching a list of restrictions to the path’s use that could force cyclists to dismount their bikes and walk them through the recently reopened north end of the park.

“I’d probably just stay on the streets,” Flemming said when asked if he’d use the path if it meant he had walk his bike through the park.

Most other cyclists interviewed agreed.

“If I had to get off my bike, I’d just use the streets instead,” Brooklyn resident Meira Jough said on her way home. “I don’t want to argue against the path...any [bike] path would be a big help, anywhere in the city.

Waiting to make a left turn at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, Alexander Reyna, another Brooklyn resident, said not only would he not use the park as a shortcut to or from the bridge, he didn’t think anyone should.

“[It] would create more problems,” Reyna said. “It’s going to increase the chances that people are going to ride through the park, which is going to cause problems. Anything that the city tries to do to make it safer or easier for bikes is fantastic, but it’s got to be thought out. You literally take your life in your hands every time you ride a bike in the city.”

The DOT’s Russo told CB1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee on June 10 that most cyclists crossing Lower Manhattan from Hudson River Park use Chambers Street, which he said is too challenging for the average rider, and dangerous, too.

“It’s narrow, it’s two-way, you’ve got left turns, right turns, turning conflicts, trucks loading, buses, pedestrians, jaywalking, all sorts of activity making it very challenging for cyclists,” Russo said.

But members of CB1 said bikes traveling along the narrow walkway presents other dangers.

 Committee member Ann De Falco said she worried about pedestrian/cyclist conflict, and was especially concerned about the safety of parents with baby strollers and older pedestrians.

Peter Glazier worried that the path would also attract skateboarders and rollerbladers. “We’ve seen this happen down here underneath the Brooklyn Bridge,” Glazier said. “There’s nothing that’s going to prohibit them from doing that here. If you allow bikes [into the park], skateboarders are not going to be far behind and the rollerbladers are not going to be far behind them.”

Warren Street resident Rick Landman, a member of the Friends of City Hall Park neighborhood group and a cyclist, said the walkway, which narrows and broadens between 10 and 23 feet, would likely not accommodate both cyclists and pedestrians, let alone those who simply want to sit and enjoy the park.

“The whole atmosphere is going to change,” said Landman, who said he’s never had a problem cycling on Chambers Street. “All of a sudden the people that want to sit and talk or read, now they feel like they’re in the middle of a bike lane. I’m not anti-cyclist, but I really think this is not the right location.”

After much deliberation, the committee voted to approve the DOT’s proposal with a long list of restrictions. The resolution will be voted on at CB1’s June 24 general meeting. The resolution stipulates that Parks Enforcement Patrol officers be stationed at both ends of the walkway to curb “reckless cycling” and, if it passes, the dismount rule.

The DOT proposal includes signage and street markings indicating the bike lane boundaries and directional flow. On the City Hall Park walkway, Russo said plans would include bicycle stamps on the south half of the walkway, as well as signage and asphalt ramps where the walkway meets Broadway and Centre Street.

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