UPPER WEST SIDE, Manhattan (PIX11) — Since the 1930s, there have been air shafts on the ground in Riverside Park, each covered with a heavy metal grate, every dozen or so yards, for some 30 blocks.
In the last few days, those grates have had metal signs attached to them reading “Danger” and warning about the risks of standing on the grates. The fact that those signs have suddenly appeared is raising concerns that the danger being warned about could be far more than just a word of caution.
“I noticed the signs,” said Anita Bergman, a frequent parkgoer who was in Riverside Park walking her dog. “I wondered if maybe something happened that we weren’t
aware of,” she continued, “or if there is a reason for this.”
The airshafts that the grates cover provide ventilation for an Amtrak rail tunnel that runs underneath Riverside Park. The design dates back nearly a century to when urban planner Robert Moses directed efforts to cover the west side rail lines with the parkland.
Henry Frazier, who was also walking his dog in Riverside Park, said that the Upper West Side has been his home for all of his 67 years. He called the new developments off-putting.
“I grew up around here, and they never had signs,” he said. “And I’ve been into the tunnels also, when I was a kid.”
“We have never seen signs like that,” he continued. “So we’re wondering why.”
Bergman echoed Frazier’s comment, which was apparently on the minds of many people PIX11 News encountered in the park.
“What is the danger?” she asked, “And if there was a danger, like why wasn’t there a sign before?”
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It’s a question that PIX11 News posed to the New York City Parks Department.
It had posted other signs in the park, regarding a related issue, that Riverside Park visitor Ryan Hu mentioned.
“When I’m walking, I don’t really think about what’s underneath,” he said, “like the sidewalk I’m walking on.”
He spoke while walking on the busy park promenade that’s next to the grates and air shafts. The promenade is built right on top of the railroad tracks, and the walkway is buckled and collapsing in spots, where steel girders below the pavement are showing strain in holding the walkway up over the trains underneath.
The city’s parks department has posted its own signs explaining why it has installed heavy concrete barriers on the most severely compromised part of the promenade to prevent vehicles from riding on top of it.
Regarding the “Danger” signs, though, the parks department directed questions to Amtrak. For its part, the rail corporation said, in a statement:
“We have been placing these warning signs on all of the Riverside Park gratings as a precautionary measure to discourage parkgoers from standing and or jumping on them. While the current condition of the gratings remains safe, having large groups congregate and jump on them could create an unsafe, hazardous condition.”
Regarding structural issues on the promenade over the railroad tracks, the parks department’s signs say that “both immediate repairs and longer-term rehabilitation are funded.”
The parks department did not divulge the extent to which they’re funded, or when repairs and other structural improvements will happen.