an attempted rape of a woman in Silver Lake Park on April 3<\/a>. <\/p>\nDistrict Attorney Michael E. McMahon, a proponent of reopening the park road, penned a series of letters to city officials and his Silver Lake opponents at the time laying out his position on the road\u2019s reopening during work week hours Monday to Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the chief law enforcement official on Staten Island, my interest in reopening Silver Lake Park Road was and continues to be vested in the protection of public safety,\u201d McMahon, a Democrat, wrote in one of his letters. \u201cThe potential for criminals to exploit the desolate nature of Silver Lake Park and threaten the safety of unsuspecting park users has been a concern of mine and the police department that is substantiated by data from RCDA\u2019s Crime Strategies Unit and the NYPD.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opponents of the road\u2019s opening to vehicular traffic aren\u2019t buying the public safety argument from the Island\u2019s top law enforcement official. They point out that crime in Island parks is generally low and that motor vehicles pose a more consistent threat to pedestrians and cyclists. <\/p>\n
Mike Cassidy, an avid runner who has used the park for decades, said the roadway\u2019s reopening has caused him and his family to look elsewhere for their outdoor time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI basically don\u2019t run in Silver Lake on the weekdays anymore, which is really terrible,\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cThe roadway in that park is so close to the sidewalk, the sidewalk is so narrow, and there\u2019s not much of a gap with the cars speeding through there. It\u2019s hard to relax and get into a rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cassidy said that his children also learned to ride their bikes along the road, something they\u2019ve been doing less of with the return of vehicle traffic. <\/p>\n
Rose Uscianowski, a Staten Island activist with the Transportation Alternatives organization and an opponent of vehicular traffic in Silver Lake Park, said that an actual park safety investment would come with more funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing cars into a park is not going to make it safer,\u201d Uscianowski said. \u201cBringing better facilities in the park and better lighting to the park and up-keeping the trails in the park, that\u2019s to me, a much better way of making the park safer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Borough President Vito Fossella, a Republican, and Councilmember Kamillah Hanks, a Democrat representing the North Shore, both supported last year\u2019s push to reopen Silver Lake Park Road to vehicle traffic during the week.<\/p>\n
Hanks and Fossella both said Thursday that they continue to support the current arrangement that has the road open to vehicles during work week hours and closed on the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reached a compromise, and we know that there\u2019s two sides to every story, and we had…residents and constituents that let us know that they would like to keep the road open,\u201d Hanks said. \u201cThis has been something that\u2019s fairly recent because of COVID, and we wanted to expand our public realm and our public open space due to the pandemic. However, everybody has to compromise, and I think that we rightfully made a decision to close it on weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s administration shuttered the road in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic as a way to promote the usage of open space. Before its COVID closure, the road had generally been open to vehicle traffic.<\/p>\n
What Mamdani plans to do with the park roads in Silver Lake and in Queens remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
A Parks Department spokesperson said they are in receipt of the request letter and are reviewing it. Spokespeople for the Mamdani administration did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A group of Staten Islanders want to see the road through Silver Lake Park…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-101786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}