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Anyone can sign--any age, residency or nationality. All that's required is a love of Central Park.

Below find thoughtful essays, historical timelines and important reports which all conclude one thing: Cars have no place in Central Park!

It's shortly before six on a recent morning in Central Park. Dogs frolic, off-leash, through meadows. Joggers breeze along the roadways. In the half-lit hours just past dawn, the park is the urban idyll that its founders, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, envisioned at the park's birth, 150 years ago.

A study released today by Transportation Alternatives allays fears that extending car-free hours in Central Park would add to Harlem's traffic. The report, titled Harlem's Traffic Magnet (PDF), details how the Central Park loop drive entrances on 110th street at Malcolm X Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard act as traffic magnets, pulling drivers off the FDR, the Harlem River Drive and the West Side Highway and onto neighborhood streets north of Central Park.

Ken Coughlin, occasional Streetsblog contributor, long-time coordinator of Transportation Alternatives' Car-Free Central Park campaign and all-around mensch suffered a heart attack on Saturday. T.A. board member Jeff Prant and executive director Paul Steely White visited Ken at St. Lukes Roosevelt on the Upper West Side on Sunday. They say he's in relatively good spirits and will undergo triple bypass surgery tomorrow.

The year 2007 may prove to be one of the most important years in the storied history of New York City's development. In a future timeline of urban advances, it might be printed in as big a font and as bold a type as 1811--when the grid system was adopted--or 1904--when the I.R.T. subway opened. The text adjacent to 2007 could say something like "the start of livable streets," or "the bike boom begins," or "congestion pricing kicks off." It may turn out that all of those descriptions may suit 2007. The real question is, in hindsight, will they?

Dear T.A.

I'm training for the marathon. Sometimes, while I'm running in Central Park, the car exhaust really gets to me and I feel short of breath.

—Simone C.

Dear Simone,

You are not the only one suffering from car exhaust. According to a new Environmental Defense report, "The Dangerous Days of Summer," on 22 of the 101 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, New York City air is so bad that the city's 188,596 asthmatic kids put themselves at serious risk just by venturing outdoors.

"A rally to ride Central Park of cars will be hld on Tuesday, Oct. 26. Sponsored by Transportation Alternatives, which promotes pedestrian, bicyclist and environmental interests, the rally will feature elected officials and other prominent New Yorkers. It will be held at the Universalist Church at 160 Central Park West at 76th Street. For more details visit www.car-freecentralpark.org."

Prohibiting cars on Central Park's loop would trigger only "barely noticeable" traffic increases on neighboring streets, according to a study released Sunday.