Central Park's six-mile loop is getting a major facelift starting this month as part of a city plan to give walkers more space and quiet the long-standing battle between pedestrians and cyclists.
Crews will begin repaving the drive on St. Patrick's Day and the transportation department expects work on the loop's southern section to conclude by the end of April. Hostilities between bike riders and pedestrians play out on the city sidewalks and bike lanes daily, but are perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in Central and Prospect parks.
Collisions between cyclists and pedestrians on the Central Park loop have left at least two people dead since 2014 and two others critically injured.
“As we banned vehicles to be inside Central Park, the question now is the interaction between cyclists and pedestrians,” Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in an interview. “As the father of two daughters, it's so critical that we do our paving, separating more of the space for pedestrians and cyclists.”
E-bikes have become significantly more popular since 2018, when cars were banned in Central Park. The transportation department worked with the Central Park Conservancy to figure out a way to keep the speedier bicycles in a lane designated for faster travel, according to David Saltonstall, the conservancy’s vice president for government relations.
“There's going to be an inside lane for pedestrians and joggers. There'll be a middle lane for slower bikers and then a speedier lane on the outside, which is reserved for emergency vehicles, for work vehicles, but also for all the e-vehicles that are now very much in the park," he said.
The overhaul will expand the portions of the roadway designated for pedestrians and will include replacing every traffic light with bicycle-specific signals in an effort to reduce conflicts.
The transportation department will also add a new bicycle path along the Bridle Path at 86th Street, and some traffic lights could be removed and replaced with signage identifying active bicycle lanes and pedestrian crossings.
The redesign follows a similar overhaul to the Prospect Park loop in 2023.
The repaving and redesign of the southern portion of the loop will cover 96th Street on the West Side Drive to 90th Street on the East Drive. The northern portion of the loop will be overhauled to coincide with the reconstruction of the Davis Center near the Harlem Meer.
