Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at changes in Central Park that give pedestrians, runners and cyclists more room on the roadways. We’ll also get details on an $800 million renovation of Arthur Ashe Stadium, the centerpiece of tennis in the United States.
In Central Park, where coexistence among the crowds is often fragile, a new effort to keep everyone in his or her lane — walkers, runners and cyclists — is nearing completion.
One lane — the left lane — is being painted a light tan, indicating that it is for pedestrians only. Or, as Betsy Smith, the president of the Central Park Conservancy, put it: “This is where pedestrians belong. This is their protected space.”
That visual cue comes as the space in the lanes is being reapportioned for the first time since cars were barred from the park drives several years ago. The roadways in the middle and southern parts of the six-mile loop in the park have just been repaved, from 96th Street on the West Drive to 90th Street on the East Drive. The northern part of the loop will get its face-lift next year.
The transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, noted when the repaving began in March that the goal was “to reimagine how the park loop can best reflect the needs of parkgoers.” He said that the project was intended to “prioritize pedestrian safety while also better accommodating cyclists and legal e-mobility options.”
Smith was more succinct. She said the purpose was “avoiding conflict.”
Accomplishing that, or trying to, involved reallocating space, always a challenge in New York. A report last year noted that the drives in the park varied from 22 feet to 42 feet from one curb to the other and that the widths were inconsistent for different users along the way. In some places, the pedestrian lane was as narrow as eight feet across, even “in places where the drive was quite wide,” Smith noted on Tuesday.
The conservancy called for consistency — 10 feet for a pedestrian lane, and 10 feet for each of two adjacent bicycle lanes. The pedestrian lane is still on the left side, as it was before the repaving. The one in the middle is for slow-to-medium-speed bikers, Smith said. The one on the right is a for e-bikes and high-speed cyclists.
The city plans to put bicycle symbols in the traffic lights, to remind cyclists that they are supposed to stop at the crosswalks. The Transportation Department said that the lights at some crosswalks might be removed and replaced with “pedestrian crossing” and “active bike lane” warning signs. Smith hopes that some traffic lights can eventually be lowered, putting them at eye level for cyclists. At their present height, “the lights talk to cars,” she said. “We want to talk to bikes and runners.”
The wider lanes and the paint for the pedestrian corridor are being completed as the city moves toward the end of a two-year pilot project that allowed e-bikes and e-scooters in Central Park, in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and on greenways like the one along the Brooklyn waterfront. Until May 31, the Parks Department is running a web survey that asks for specific locations where people have encountered problems “with the flow of bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, pedestrians or other park users.”
The pilot project did not open parks to motorcycles or mopeds. But some opponents say even e-bikes are too much.
“They’re lawless,” said Pamela Manasse, a co-founder of the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, which favors requiring e-bikes and e-scooters to be registered and to carry license plates. “They don’t adhere to regulations. They don’t yield to pedestrians. They ride, sometimes, on the pedestrian walkways.” Janet Schroeder, another co-founder, added that Central Park “shouldn’t be a cut-through for people to fly on their e-bikes, whether they’re Citi Bike riders or deliverers.”
Schroeder said that their group has more than 1,200 members and that more than 100 had been hit and hurt by e-bikes or scooters. Manasse was struck by a moped in front of Lincoln Center in 2022 and partially paralyzed. “I’ve worked hard to regain the ability to walk,” she said on Tuesday.
She said she did not expect the repaving to improve the traffic flow in Central Park. “One can’t walk across the park drives without taking their life into their own hands,” she said, adding, “These dangers will not be alleviated” by the wider lanes.
Weather
Expect a cloudy day with rain in the afternoon and evening. The temperature will reach the high 50s and drop to the upper 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Memorial Day (May 26).
The latest Metro news
-
Hochul apologizes to Native Americans: Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized for the state’s operation of a boarding school that “sanctioned ethnic cleansing” of Native American children. She met with more than a dozen members of the Seneca Nation who had attended the school, which closed in 1957.
-
Still in custody: More than 10 weeks after his arrest, Mahmoud Khalil, the country’s most prominent pro-Palestinian demonstrator, is still being held in a detention center in Louisiana. The federal judge in the case has yet to weigh in fully on the free speech and due process issues that Khalil’s lawyers have raised.
-
A congresswoman is charged with assault: The government says that Representative LaMonica McIver was a ringleader who assaulted two federal agents as she tried to block the arrest of Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark outside a migrant detention facility. McIver denies the government’s account.
-
“I was physically sick”: At Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking and racketeering trial, Casandra Ventura’s mother described the moment when her daughter told her that Combs was threatening to release two explicit sex tapes.
-
The flowers in “Van Gogh’s Flowers”: With a colorful explosion of sunflowers, a new exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden draws its inspiration from the Dutch painter. Here’s how the gardeners got the sunflowers to bloom just in time.
-
Lincoln Center plans a makeover at its western edge: It hopes to attract new audiences as it builds a 2,000-seat outdoor stage facing Amsterdam Avenue and adds more greenery. Construction on the $335 million project will begin next spring.
An $800 million plan to renew Arthur Ashe Stadium
After an $800 million renovation is completed in time for the United States Open in 2027, Arthur Ashe Stadium will still be the world’s largest tennis arena, with roughly 24,000 seats.
What will be different is the look and feel of a stadium that opened in 1997 and is now the second-oldest major sports venue in the New York area, after Madison Square Garden.
The most visible changes will be in the crowded concourse levels. The walkways will be expanded, a plus in areas that sometimes get jammed with fans. That is hardly surprising: Since 2017, attendance at the U.S. Open has grown year over year (excluding the 2020 pandemic year, when no fans were allowed). Last year it topped one million for the first time.
The renovated stadium will have space for high-end shops and restaurants, and a $250 million players building will take shape on an existing parking lot. It will tower over the five practice courts.
“We are doubling down on the continued growth that we are seeing in tennis in this country,” said Danny Zausner, the chief operating officer of the United States Tennis Association, which runs the Open. Construction has already begun; the U.S.T.A. said the project would not interfere with the tournament over the next two years.
The nonprofit U.S.T.A. said it would pay for the renovation through reserve funds and debt. It said it would not need any more land in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where the U.S.T.A. leases the 46 acres that house the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, which includes Arthur Ashe Stadium. The U.S.T.A. has spent over $1 billion on construction over the past decade, adding three new stadiums and refurbishing the outer courts and practice areas.
METROPOLITAN diary
At the Pool
Dear Diary:
On a hot July afternoon a few years ago, I brought my 9-month-old baby to a public pool in our Queens neighborhood.
As a new parent, I was overwhelmed by all the steps required to get a wriggling baby into the water. Regular diaper off, swim diaper on, onesie off, bathing suit on, etc.
On top of all that, the pool had a long list of rules and a staff whose members were diligently enforcing them with frequent blasts of their whistles.
Finally, we got into the pool. My baby splashed around in the cool water for a bit, and then we got out to sit on a lounge chair and breastfeed.
A few minutes later, an older woman who worked there approached us. I had seen her keeping strict order around the pool, and my body tightened as I prepared to be told we were breaking the rules in one way or another.
Instead, her face broke into a smile as she passed by.
“Go, mama, go!” she said.
— Lindsey Lange-Abramowitz
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post In Central Park, Trying for Peace Between Walkers and Cyclists appeared first on New York Times.
