Cars in Parks

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a competition to design Central Park and it opened in 1859. Although Manhattan was not yet expanded very much uptown , the contest stipulations did say that there needed to be four crosstown roadways going through the park. Olmsted and Vaux won in part because of their idea of putting the required roadways in a trench and then heavily planting near the top in order to hide park goers from seeing or hearing traffic.

Then a judge ruined it.

The drive goes all the way around the park and was originally intended for carriage use—a way to see the lovely terrain and show off how rich they were. Motorists wanted to be able to use it, and in 1899, a judge interpreted the park ordinance: "The drive shall be used only by persons in pleasure carriages, on bicycles, or on horseback," to include cars, and let them in. From the start, people complained about the noise. Then as cars became more popular, it became clear that they were not “pleasure carriages” going on a leisurely Sunday drive around the park. Instead, Park Drive became the fastest way to get from between 59 and 110th streets. source

Since then, the argument has gone back and forth--everyone agreeing that cars don't belong in the park, but most government people considering it a necessity.

There are four parks in the city that allow some car traffic. One in each burrough except for the Bronx. However, Prospect Park and Central park are the most contentious. Transportation Alternatives has been spearheading the fight against cars in both Prospect and Central Parks. The main argument is that parks are intended to be refuges from the bustle of the city. Safety issues are also there, but there have not been many instances. One person was killed by a car in Prospect Park, and there have been problems in Central Park, including a Fox News writer purposefully hitting a cyclist and driving for two hundred feet with him on the hood. The SUV had dangerously cut him off, and when the cyclist angrily confronted him at the next light, he took action.

Parks are undeniably intended for pedestrians, and giving cars priority and forcing cyclists, runners and rollerbladers into one small lane, apart from being dangerous at times, is incongruous with the very idea of a park.