Earth to the Central Park Conservatory: Encouraging more e-bikes to race through the park is not only wrong, it\u2019s a betrayal of the park\u2019s very purpose.<\/p>\n
Along with the Parks Department and the Department of Transportation, the Conservatory is looking not just to give e-bikes a permanent OK to barrel around Central Park, but also to reserve a full lane in the Park Drive for \u201cmicromobility\u201d vehicles like e-bikes and e-scooters (while removing some traffic signals that the ebikers routinely ignore anyway).<\/p>\n
This is crazy: It\u2019s only been six years since cars got banned 24\/7 from Park Drive; why privilege a new class of machines?<\/p>\n
Plus: E-bikes are a proven danger to pedestrians, the very people the park is most for. <\/p>\n
In October, an e-bike killed a 60-year-old woman<\/a> the Brooklyn Navy Yard; another fatally hit a 49-year-old man<\/a> crossing a Greenpoint street; days after that, a third e-bike plowed into a 3-year-old girl <\/a>in Williamsburg, sending her to the hospital.<\/p>\n E-bikes are heavier and faster than regular bikes, with some models able to hit speeds of 30 mph \u2014 and no one needs any license, much less any safety training, to operate them.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Mayor Adams set a 15-mph limit for these speed demons in October<\/a>, but the bikers are notorious for ignoring traffic laws; stories of e-bike hit-and-runs <\/a>are all too common.<\/a><\/p>\n The Conservancy\u2019s mission is \u201cto preserve and celebrate Central Park as a sanctuary from the pace and pressures of city life\u201d; how does inviting e-bikes to run wild serve that purpose?<\/p>\n If the park should let anyone go crazy, it\u2019s kids \u2014 but instead this move endangers them.<\/p>\n The logical thing to do is to ban e-bikes, not cater to them.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n We suspect some idiot ideologues imagine e-bikes are environment-friendly alternative transportation, and so worth encouraging to \u201csave the planet.\u201d <\/p>\n That likely appealed to Conservancy executives as a cause they could take up to justify their obscene salaries.<\/a><\/p>\n Conservancy CEO Elizabeth \u201cBetsy\u201d Smith, who draws a cool $933,000\u00a0a year, has been on a roll of late \u2014 posturing against the managers<\/a> of Wollman Rink, dumping on the traditional and beloved park carriages<\/a> and bungling a redesign<\/a> of traffic patterns on key parts of the Drive.<\/p>\n Maybe this move wasn\u2019t Smith\u2019s idea, but the product of one of her $300,000-a-year minions. <\/p>\n Either way, it\u2019s beyond obvious that these \u201cprofessionals\u201d are serving the wrong interests \u2014 trying to impress the \u201cright people\u201d by signing on to foolish causes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s past time for the Conservancy\u2019s board to clean house, and hire managers who actually care about Central Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earth to the Central Park Conservatory: Encouraging more e-bikes to race through the park is not only wrong,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[10483,128,4709,4325,32783,304,9,24,63,299,4159,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-61626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bikes","tag-bronx","tag-central-park","tag-crashes","tag-cyclists","tag-editorial","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-pedestrians","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61626","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=61626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}