Success! NYPD Agrees to Ease Crackdown on Central Park Cyclists

After a major uproar among New York City cyclists, the NYPD has recently agreed to ease off a ticketing blitz that had threatened to sour bike riders on one of the most famous urban parks in the world.

The "zero-tolerance" crackdown had police looking to slap $270 tickets on riders who rode through the (mostly car-free) park's 46 traffic lights—even if their behavior was cautions or no pedestrians were nearby. Cyclists were rightfully outraged. The constant threat of a ticket—even for extremely careful riders— could ruin the ride on the park's famous 6-mile loop with unnecessary starts and stops. The strategy seemed to unreasonably target the cycling community over other park users.

Two petitions started on Change.org were part of the cyclists' strategy to pressure the NYPD to end these ticketing traps. 

The New York Cycle Club, one of the nation's largest all-volunteer recreational cycling clubs, started a petition that gained more than 1,000 signatures. The petition asked New York City officials to amend the cyclist-targeted ticketing approach and go back to a reasonable policy of ticketing all park users (walkers, runners, cyclists, and drivers) who were truly reckless on the road. As the club gathered the signatures on the petition and the issue gained media attention, NYCC President Ellen Jaffe joined other bicycle advocacy organizations and concerned cyclists to meet with the police department officials, New York City councilmembers, and members of Mayor Bloomberg's administration to successfully work out a resolution to the crackdown.

In addition, after getting no response to initial inquiries to the NYPD, a group of concerned Central Park regulars, led by Upper East Side triathlete Adrian Bijanada, started a Facebook group and a Change.org petition that gathered more than 1,700 signatures online and more than 2,000 signatures in total over the course of a few weeks. The cyclists organized and packed a city council meeting that addressed the issue. They also rode down to City Hall and delivered the petition signatures on camera at a press conference attending by many organizations.

Though the cyclists had been hoping the Bloomberg administration could implement a more permanent solution (the park's traffic lights could, for example, blink yellow during the park's car-free hours), the group considers the campaign a win now that the original crackdown has ended. Guido Gabriele, a Central Park cyclist who helped organize the grassroots group, wrote this update to me in an email last week:

"Things have been better. We are still being careful, but there haven't been any red light tickets in the park in a while...What we wanted was to be able to use the park with the same freedom as everyone else, and that's what we have," he said. "I would add that nobody really wants the NYPD to 'lose.' There has been a return to reasonable coexistence, which is nice. Riders have been more cautious around pedestrians, and the police have been more reasonable with cyclists."

Sounds like a great success to me. Now, if only we could get rid of cars in Central Park completely. (Anyone want to start a petition?)

Follow Change.org’s Environment page on Facebook,  Twitter or RSS.

Photo credit: Tinou Bao via Flickr