It’s getting harder to walk or bike through Central Park without wondering if you’re the next tragedy. We just saw two people lose their lives in less than fourteen days near East 84th Street, and yet the city is still acting like everything is fine.
The deaths of pedestrian Richie O’Brien and cyclist Douglas Adams happened in separate crashes during the fall. These weren’t just random accidents; they happened in a place where we already had a roadmap for safety that nobody is actually using.
The Plan Is Gathering Dust
According to reporting from Streetsblog NYC, a major safety and circulation study for Central Park Drives was released back in November 2024. This report, a joint effort by the NYC Department of Transportation, the Parks Department, and the Central Park Conservancy, laid out 14 specific recommendations to fix the area’s circulation and safety issues.
The study included a mix of short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. However, Streetsblog NYC reports that since that study came out, the Adams and Mamdani administrations have only implemented minor tweaks. While the DOT has updated some crossing signals and repainted sections of the drives, these small changes don’t provide real protection for people using the park.
The reporting also notes that the city hasn’t even followed through on basic inspections. While the Conservancy claims they started looking into every crosswalk in the park, there is no public data showing the results of those inspections or which specific crossings are the most dangerous. We don’t even have clear answers regarding the area near East 84th Street where these recent fatalities occurred.
Stop Painting Lines and Start Protecting People
I’m sick of seeing the city treat fatal accidents like a minor maintenance issue. You can’t just slap some new paint on the asphalt and call it a “safety improvement” after people have died. New lane markings are a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. We don’t need another expensive, years-long study or a new round of bureaucracy to tell us what we already know: the current setup is killing people.
The 2024 study already has the answers. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas; it’s a total lack of will from City Hall to actually execute them. We need a public dashboard that shows exactly what is being fixed, how much it costs, and where the money is going. We need to see the data on near-misses and crashes so we can hold these agencies accountable. Right now, there’s no way to track if any real progress is happening because the city isn’t showing us the work.
It’s easy for officials to pat themselves on the back for repainting a stripe, but that doesn’t keep a cyclist from being hit by a car. The city needs to pull that 2024 plan out of the drawer and start implementing the bold recommendations they promised. If they can’t even manage to inspect the crosswalks where people are dying, how can we trust them to run the rest of the city?
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
