Bikes in Central Park

Above is a view of the Conservatory Garden, a six-acre formal garden that is part of New York's Central Park.

Central Park is enormous, 843 acres, and a huge asset to a city composed mostly of buildings and streets.  It fosters many species of migratory birds as seasons change.  It has 21 playgrounds, two ice skating rinks, many sports fields, an enormous reservoir, a lake, a zoo and miles of paths for walking, running and bicycling.

September, one of the most pleasant weather months in New York, is high season for park usage.  Its paths are thronged with walkers, runners, bicyclists, skateboarders, inline skaters and baby strollers.

Lately, the bicycles have drawn a great deal of attention.

Two Pedestrians Killed

About 10 days ago, a racing cyclist, said to be traveling at very high speeds, hit a woman at 4:30 p.m. as she stepped off a curb.  Brain dead, she was rushed to a hospital, where she died a few days later.

Much was made of the cyclist's bicycle, said to be a brakeless, high-performance model valued at $4,000, and of his weaving among the bicycle path, the pedestrian walkway and the street so as not to have to stop or slow down to cede the right of way.  The cyclist, who did not leave the scene, admitted he had been traveling in the wrong lane.

This is the sort of story that is loved by the New York Post, an engaging tabloid in the city.  A Post reporter found a pedestrian witness who said, "He was yelling for her to get out of the way, but I don't think she heard him."

Later the the Post found a man who claimed the same bicycler nearly hit him in June.  "He kept yelling really loud, 'Get out of the way!" . . . I had to jump backwards.  He missed me by like two inches.  You could see the arrogance on this guy."

In the June incident, the Post's witness estimated the bicycler was traveling 35 miles an hour.  After the accident two weeks ago, the bicycler said he was moving at eight or nine miles an hour.  Later he released a statement calling the collision an "unavoidable accident" and expressing sorrow for the family's loss.

In August, there had been another bicycle-pedestrian collision.  A 17-year-old on a bike swerved onto a pedestrian path to avoid a pedicab.  He hit a 75-year-old jogger, a high school physics teacher who was training for the New York Marathon later this year.  After a couple days in the hospital, the jogger died.

Bikes in the Park

The Central Park Conservancy, which co-manages the park with the city and provides much of its maintenance funding, keeps track of park usage and historical information on park visits over the years.  In 1972, it reported there were 12.8 million park visits.  In recent years, the total has been more than 35 million visits.

In 1982, observers began to note increasing numbers of park visits for "active recreation" like running and bicycling.  The park's bicycle path, 6.2 miles long, is now used by bicyclers training for long-distance races.  They claim there is nowhere else in the city to do such training.

The more people who use the park, I suppose, the more likely it becomes that people will run into each other.

Perhaps unfortunately, traffic laws are regarded as optional in New York.  There are reports of bicyclers running red lights all over town, just as pedestrians commonly ignore WAIT signals when cross traffic is clear.  Earlier this year, a girl crossing a Manhattan street with her father with the WALK signal was killed by a taxi driver making a turn.

One result of the most recent bicycle collision death has been deployment of police to the park to write flurries of tickets (expensive ones, $270 or more) for bicyclists who run red lights.

This has happened before, including in 2011, when police took up positions in the park and wrote tickets for bikes running red lights or at high speeds captured by radar guns.  At least one cyclist responded on his blog with the kind of in-your-face pushback that we all have come to love in New Yorkers.

"Why has the NYPD suddenly decided that the Central Park (bicycle) loop's 20-some traffic lights must be obeyed -- by cyclists only -- when there are no cars in the park?  They were not ticketing jaywalkers or, so far as I know, skateboarders or wheelchair operators."

He added, "If you have to stop at every red light, you really can't ride in the park."

To be fair, the bicyclist conceded that "The problem is when people try to train when they shouldn't, like at one in the afternoon on a Saturday in May."

Or at 4:30 in the afternoon on a mild day in September.