How does she say it with a straight face?

Responding to 100,000 signatures and long-standing calls for a three month car-free summer experiment in Central Park, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall said, "While we continue to investigate opportunities to limit traffic on the Central Park loop, it remains a critical transportation link for commuters, and we are unable to prohibit vehicles from using the loop at this time," Weinshall said.

So, there you have it. To Weinshall, the Central Park Loop Drives are no different than the BQE. To DOT Central Park isn't a park. Rather it is a crtical part of the transportation network.

Let's take Weinshall's statement at face value. Central Park is a "critical transportation link" in New York City's commuter system. OK. Well, that's a problem, folks. That's not what Central Park is supposed to be. The forward-looking city fathers who set aside the land for Central Park in the middle of the 19th century didn't intend for it to be a highway. And that's not what New Yorkers who live in an increasingly dense, crowded and traffic-congested city need it to be today. If Central Park now functions as a critical transportation link, is that something we really need and want to continue? Or is that something we need and want to change?

But those questions assume that Weinshall's assertion deserves to be taken at face value. It doesn't. The fact of the matter is that the Central Park Drives are not a critical transportation link in the Manhattan commuter network. Millions of commuters travel in and out of the Manhattan business district each day. The MetroNorth Railway is a critical link. The Lincoln Tunnel is a critical link. The subway lines are critical links. The Central Park Loop Drives are not a critical link! The Loop Drives carry a minuscule fraction of the city's commuter traffic each day. And the vast majority of this small number of commuters would still have many other transportation options were the Drives closed for the summer. That the city's transportation commissioner would characterize the Central Park Loop Drives as a "critical transportation link" reflects either profound disingenuousness or an embarrassing lack of knowledge about how her city's transportation system actually works.

For years the DOT has been saying that closing Central Park to cars would create a traffic cataclysm around the Park. This claim is based on bogus traffic models. When modeling a car-free park, the DOT assumes that every single vehicle that currently uses the park would simply shift over to the next adjacent north-south avenue if the park were closed. The studies assume that not a single motorist will choose to use transit, or travel at a different time of day, or consolidate trips, or travel on, say, 2nd or 8th Avenues if the park were closed. The studies don't account for the elasticity of traffic and the well known fact that when you close a thoroughfare to traffic, more often than not, traffic congestion is reduced on surrounding streets.

But the biggest and most obvious problem with DOT's traffic models is that they don't account for the many benefits that would accrue to a vast number of human beings if the park were closed to traffic. When the DOT does these studies it only counts cars and traffic volumes. It doesn't count rollerbladers, the difficulty of crossing the street at Columbus Circle, asthmatic kids in Harlem, or the impact of automobile emissions on global climate change. In a DOT traffic engineering study there is simply no qualitative difference between Central Park's Drives and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. DOT studies and plans for cars and traffic. As a result New York City gets cars and traffic. Even in our parks.

Statements like the one above make me think that history will look unkindly on Commissioner Weinshall's regime. While her counterpart in the city's public health agency Thomas Friedan has overhauled and updated the city's public health system and pushed progressive but politically difficult initiatives like the smoking ban, Weinshall has maintained her agency's cars-first status quo and overseen a record-setting increase in traffic congestion. In the same time that the City of London's transport agency has set and begun acting on ambitious goals to reduce traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions and pedestrian deaths, Weinshall's DOT has filled x number of pot holes and fixed y number of street lights. The city still doesn't set meaningful goals for transportation and public space. It has no over-arching, long-term transportation plan.

The most disappointing thing about Weinshall's public statement on Central Park is that it backs her into a corner. To make the park car-free, the mayor will now have to contradict her and set policy that goes against this idea that the Central Park Drives are a vital commuter link. Through misinformation, Weinshall has made it that much harder for a car-free park to happen during the Bloomberg Administration.

Hopefully the Mayor or his deputy Dan Doctoroff can figure out a face-saving way to overrule their transportation commissioner. All advocates are asking for is an experiment -- three months in the summer without cars in the park. If it doesn't work, it doesn't have to happen again. Why not give it a shot? One hundred thousand people signed petitions asking for it.

If you want to help make the push for a car-free park, Transportation Alternatives is organizing a rally on the steps of City Hall on Sunday, March 26 at noon. Show up.

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