you better believe they are graduating that way. because they aren't being taught english—they're being taught hebrew only. maybe if you read a single article about it then you'd read that there's parents literally begging that their kids an education that teaches them english. many switch their kids to public school. the ones that don't get threatened by the community for wanting to.

Ban the people cosplaying as “Lance Armstrong Jrs” who think they own the park.

That is awesome, great job!

Before 10am are some of the busiest hours. To hell with all those speed cyclists.

I would add to the list of problems:

• delivery guys biking against traffic (mostly in the evenings)
• mopeds (it’s rare but really piss me off)
• runner clubs who take up the whole lane so you have to endanger yourself and move to the bike path

I see. Thanks

Some proposals I've seen is to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians. I think the idea is to use little pedestrian islands similar to what they have in streets. I assume they'd place it at crosswalks between the bike and pedestrian (aka running) lane.

I am referring to that lane as a running lane, because it it primarily used by people who are running. However, I fully endorse people using it for walking. Plenty of people cannot run, plenty use that lane for power walking, and plenty use it for leisurely walks but stay to one side alone. That's fine.

What is not fine are groups of people walking across both directions of the lane or people standing in the lane while they wait for cyclists/horse cabs to pass—thereby forcing others to step into the bicycle lanes to continue on their path.

Particularly because there is typically a sidewalk next to the lane.

Does this apply to cars parked on the sidewalk too? Because it’s starting to get out of control around me.

So tell me... are kids from yeshivas graduating being unable to read and write? I'm more interested in actual evidence, not "critical thinking".

I mean this very sincerely, and wanted to make sure I understood your comments: are you calling the walking lane the running lane? In your mind the bidirectional lane to the left marked with little people is a running lane?

It's helpful to hear from different perspectives.

Just let people bike as fast as they want before 10am, and ban horses before then.

I want this. The new cards are soulless.

omfg yall are SO obtuse. i wasnt comparing reading to terrorism i was saying leaving a culture to do as it pleases doesn't work out well. & it literally hasn't in these hasidic communities.

not to mention if you don't believe what the reports of these yeshivas are doing-you're just misinformed.

maybe if you believed in more critical thinking you'd be able to understand my original point.

That's basically ever religion my dude. And no one intelligent assumes all Hasidics are bad because of this article. An anti-semite will be that way regardless.

Ask someone who’s Hasidic. My understanding is rich culture and a real sense of community, people know their neighbors and help each other out in ways small and large.

Either way, we should give the same leeway to the Hasidic lifestyle that we do to everyone else, no?

I love it! Where'd you get it??

Which retail outlet did you go to purchase you OMNY card?

What's so great about it?

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“OnPoint NYC, a nonprofit, opened the sites with backing from former Mayor Bill de Blasio in November 2021. Since then, the centers have helped prevent nearly 700 overdoses, OnPoint said. They have become pilgrimage sites for health officials, politicians and treatment groups around the country hoping to replicate them.

But the experiment in caring for people while they use drugs is at a crossroads. OnPoint said the private funding of around $1.4 million a year it uses to operate the sites will run out in February. Federal officials have until Jan. 9 to decide whether to continue backing a lawsuit against a proposed drug-use site in Philadelphia. The Justice Department said it is evaluating safe-use sites and protocols for operating them with state and local officials.  

The Biden administration’s approach to the case will determine whether cities including New York decide they have firm legal standing to increase support and funding for safe-use sites, legal experts and public-health officials said. 

“The expectation by those who stepped up and funded was that this would be the opening and that others would join,” said Sam Rivera, OnPoint NYC’s executive director. 

Legislation to create safe-use sites has stalled in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Mexico. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in August vetoed a bill that would have allowed San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles to open free-use sites. He said sanctioning drug use could exacerbate drug problems in those cities.

But there is still interest in many communities. Rhode Island passed a bill backing free-use sites in 2021, and a group there has applied to open one this summer. “When people visit these sites, they see the profound impact you can have on people when you provide respect, healthcare and autonomy,” said Brandon Marshall, professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. Some community leaders in New York resisted OnPoint’s safe-use sites. Syderia Asberry, a founder of the nonprofit Greater Harlem Coalition, spent three years fighting against what she called the oversaturation of treatment centers and shelters in Harlem. She said safe-use sites represent an acceptance of drug use as a way of life.

“People are dying. We understand that. We don’t want people to die,” she said. “But is this really helping people?” Mr. Rivera said the sites keep people alive to try treatment when they are ready. “It’s a health intervention,” he said.

He said he would need $4.5 million a year to operate the sites around the clock.

OnPoint has received about $1 million to fund the sites from donors including the New York Community Trust and the New York Health Foundation.”

>Elizabeth Smith went into Central Park at East 72nd Street expecting to find chaos. It did not take long, even on a chilly morning when the promising sky was clouding over.

>There is chaos — as defined by Smith, the president of the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy — on the drives, the six miles of road inside the park that have been off limits to most cars since 2018. Within 500 feet of where she started, where Terrace Drive branches off from East Drive, she sounded almost like a traffic reporter describing the B.Q.E. in Industry City or the Belt Parkway near J.F.K.

>“All these people come flying down — bicycles, pedestrians, runners,” she said, adding that it was a place where horse-drawn carriages clip-clop along at a far slower pace, shambling in front of the bicyclists and runners, and where pedicabs pass on the right before swinging left. “And there are no traffic signals that anyone is really obeying,” she said.

>Smith called the drives “the most heavily used resource in Central Park” and said they had become more heavily trafficked during the pandemic. She also said they are “extremely complex spaces with competing uses,” and soon they will be extremely well studied. The Conservancy, in partnership with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Transportation, is beginning a look at who uses the drives, and how.

>They have enlisted the consulting firm run by Sam Schwartz, a former first deputy transportation commissioner who is known as “Gridlock Sam.” Smith said the study would lead to “a community-driven process” that would include presentations to community boards in areas adjacent to the park and other local organizations. She said the feedback would help shape “design interventions” to make coexistence on the drives more peaceful.

>As they are now, she said, “they impinge on the reason people come to Central Park, which is to get away from the city. The city is creeping into the park through the drives.” How different that is from the purpose envisioned by the 19th-century planners who, she said, saw the park as “a place where people could get away from the city and commune with nature and have a respite from urban life.”

>On a drive around the drives, Smith continued her play-by-play with help from Erica Sopha, the conservancy’s vice president for park use and stewardship. They stopped on East Drive with the North Meadow softball fields on the left and the Mount Sinai Hospital complex in the distance on the right, a spot where pedestrians and cyclists could get in each other’s way.

>“You’ve got people who think ‘Oh, it’s not busy here, so I’m oh, going to cross the drive,’” Sopha said. “And you have bikers who think ‘It’s not busy here and this is one straight path that I can just pick up my speed.’ It’s a recipe for conflict.”

>Smith said the potential for conflict would increase as tourism bounced back and visitors joined New Yorkers in the park. “There is a tremendous amount of competition for the use of those drives,” she said. “It’s pedicabs, it’s horse carriages, it’s runners, it’s e-bikes, it’s speed bikes, it’s recreational bikers, it’s pedestrians.”

>Adding to the need to study the drives, she said, is the fact that deliverers often use them because the four transverses “don’t really accommodate bikers,” she said. The push for better crosstown bike routes surged after the death of Daniel Cammerman, who was hit by a school bus as he rode along the 96th Street transverse in 2019.

>The study follows a safety study of the drives in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which had not been reconfigured since traffic was banned in 2018. The nonprofit Prospect Park Alliance says it is preparing to release the results soon.

>The Central Park survey, in English and Spanish, asks respondents how they reach the park — on foot or on a bicycle, an e-bike, an e-scooter, a moped or some other way. It also asks if they ever feel unsafe there.

>“We’ve always thought of the park as sort of a barometer about the way people feel about the city,” Smith said, “and you know when it’s clean and well managed and beautiful, people think New York is going to be OK.”

They've always been the agency responsible for towing vehicles without license plates. You could use 311 to make the report for a while now.

BUT! And here's the rub, when you'd make the report, there was a pretty good chance they'd close it out without actually removing the vehicle. .

I know from multiple personal experiences. Vehicles without plates, who I photographed without plates and put those photos in the report would suddenly have plates when DSNY closed out the complaint. I'd have to contact the NYPD for a tow, it's not DSNY responsibility, you see.

Similar tricks and tactics are also used by NYPD for cars with plates. They'll suddenly lose plates when they go close out the complaint meaning you have to notify DSNY for a tow, it's not NYPD responsibility you see...

The other thing they'd do is close the report by stating the offending item was removed, and would you guess it, the abandoned truck was there, the next morning, as if it sprouted from the ground.

Fwiw, here are my thoughts on the matter:

As someone who is in the park four or five days a week either as a pedestrian or as a runner on the loop, the biggest issues in my mind are (1) bicyclists who treat the loop like it's the tour de France, (2) pedestrians (particularly tourists) crossing in front of runners/cyclists to get across the loop, (3) cyclists going into the running lane and runners going into the cycling lane, (4) horse carriages and pedicabs parking in the running lane so tourists can stop and take photos.

The problems with speeding and with pedestrians crossing the street are significantly exacerbated on the southern end of the park, particularly during times of the year when tourism is high. So often I'll be running, only to see a group of four casually walking shoulder to shoulder in the running lane. Even worse is having someone, without looking, leave the sidewalk and step out in front of a runner or worse a cyclist.

In my perfect world, where money was no object, they would do the following:

• Install a barrier between the running lanes and the bicycle lanes.
• Widen the running lanes by a couple of feet. Add more clear directional arrows on the ground or signs saying "Keep Right."
• Paint the running lane a different color, like orange. Pedestrians often stand in the running lane at crossings because they treat it like it's just a wide curb to the road.
• Post signs at every pedestrian crossing to inform pedestrians to look both ways.
• Install motion sensors at every pedestrian crossing that alert pedestrians to oncoming cyclists, pedicabs, runners, etc.
• Signs or campaigns to remind pedestrians that the running lane is for exercise and to keep casual leisurely strolls to the sidewalk—especially since the sidewalk is parallel to the loop for 90% of the time.
• Ban horse drawn carriages. Full stop. Invest in and allow electric horseless carriages as a replacement.
• Create specific parking spaces for pedicabs.
• On the south loop, or everything below 77th street, install speed limit signs and speed radar cameras.
• Enforcement. Tickets for speeding cyclists, tickets for cyclists in the running lane, tickets for pedicabs who park randomly—straight to jail for the very limited number of cars that are allowed on the loop if they speed.

The transverse issue is tricky. Ideally there would be a reconfiguration of at least two of the transverses to allow for a fully separated two-way bicycle lane that is protected by a concrete divider. That is probably more of a fantasy than anything else on my wishlist though.

I saw this article posted in the NYC running subreddit but didn't see it here.

In addition to the article, the Central Park Conservancy put out a survey to help inform the future design of the park available here.

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