The Road to a Car Free Park: Short term goals

• 3-Month Car-Free Trial Period
• Year Long Summer Hours

3-Month Car-Free Trial Period
The city's next step should be to to institute a three-month trial car-free period, with a comprehensive study of the real-world costs and benefits. Three months is long enough for traffic to adjust to the closure, but short enough to be comfortable for people who are worried that the park's traffic might flood surrounding neighborhoods. During this period, traffic patterns around the park would be monitored to determine what, if any, impact the policy has on the surrounding neighborhoods and park users.

Year Long Summer Hours - We won this one!
Though TA believes Prospect Park should be car-free at all times, extending the existing summer hours year round will be a big step in the right direction, a step that is already acknowledged as acceptable to the Police and the Prospect Park Alliance Community Committee. If the park can be successfully closed at off-peak times during May and September, two of the busiest traffic months of the year, it can certainly be closed during the winter months as well. T.A. has been leading the call for car-free middays throughout the year. [Current Hours]

FOUR HOURS SHORT OF A CAR-FREE PARK

1990: Car–Free Parks issues begin to take hold in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1991: Transportation Alternatives hosts hundreds of protesters on a series of marches on the loop drive through Prospect Park, momentarily freeing the Park Drive from traffic.

1992: Transportation Alternatives (TA) sends 20,000 signed postcards from park users to Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden asking for a study of a Car-Free Prospect Park. Golden asks the Department of Transportation (DOT) to do a study.

1993: Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden and the Department of Transportation assemble an advisory group which included Transportation Alternatives, the Community Boards which surround Prospect Park and others. All of the organizations in the advisory group contribute detailed suggestions on how to construct the study.

1993: Funded with federal money, the DOT begins an “18 month” study. Documents and findings dribble out over a five year period! The study is not completed until the end of 1997.

1997: The study looks at 6 different scenarios for limiting traffic in the Park. The DOT concluded that completely closing Prospect Park to car-traffic cannot be done because ONE intersection to the south of the Park might have an unacceptable Level Of Service (LOS) -- in other words, at one intersection some cars would have to wait through two cycles of a traffic light before they could proceed through the intersection.

July 1997: Bicyclist and community member Rachael Fruchter is killed by a car in Prospect Park.

January 1998: Transportation Alternatives and other community members challenge the findings of the DOT study. Transportation Alternatives commissions a traffic engineer to look at the data from the DOT study. In their assumptions, DOT did not assume ANY amount of "shrinkage" in traffic. In other words, they took the maximum number of cars traveling through Prospect Park during AM rush hour and assumed that every single one of those cars would take the road immediately adjacent to the Park at the exact same time. Previous DOT studies of a Car–Free Central Park assumed 15% levels of shrinkage, meaning, if you close the Park Drives, a certain number of motorists will find another route, another time or another mode of transport to get to where they're going. This is a standard traffic engineering percentage and assumption.

April 1998: More postcards are sent to Borough President Golden, which produces a Borough President Town Hall Meeting at Borough Hall. About 400 people show-up for the meeting; it is standing room only and people spill out the door onto the sidewalk. 93 people testify in favor of car-free park, 4 against. Testimonies of note: handicapped people’s organization testifies in favor of a car-free park, the local NYPD precinct says there is no problem with a car-free park.

Fall 1998: TA publishes the report, Dangerous by Design: A Case Against Cars in Prospect Park, which found, among other significant points, that 95% of motorists exceeded the speed limit, 50% of motorists swerved into the recreational lane, and every minute a vehicle ran a red light.

1999: Brooklyn Councilperson Stephen DiBrienza begins getting very involved in the campaign. Councilperson DiBrienza comes to demonstrations and calls for a 3-month trial closure of the Park Drive to automobile traffic. Councilmember Kenneth Fisher and others sign-on to support the same, and endorse a car-free park. The DOT and Borough President Golden deal mainly with each other on the issue.

2000: A Town Hall meeting at Union Temple for a car-free Prospect Park brings together 5 council members and 400 car-free park supporters.

2001: The list of prominent car–free park supporters continues to grow.

2002: Volunteers collect 10,000 signatures in support of a car-free Prospect Park. At a Town Hall meeting every councilmember around the Park expresses support for a 3–month trial closure. At an August DOT meeting, the DOT says that another study would be necessary but the funds to do so are not available. The community patiently awaits Councilmembers’ responses to this stall tactic, since we’ve seen it before.

December 2003: TA volunteers conduct a radar study and finds that 92% of motorists speed in Prospect Park, with 25% of motorists speeding 10 mph or more over the speed limit. The average speed of motor vehicles in the park is 38 mph.

May 2006: TA publishes the report, Are Cares Driving People Out? A study of pedestrian use patterns in Prospect Park, which found that more than 4 out of 5 park users surveyed would use the park more often if cars were permanently banned from the Park Drive, among other significant findings relative to feeling safe in a car-filled park.

Summer 2008: The Prospect Park Youth Advocate Program begins. Four brilliant, charming and talented Youth Advocates are hired and work tirelessly to succeed in winning a car-free Prospect Park and forever changing the borough of Brooklyn as we know it!

Everything else is up to you...