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Cyclists Get Green Light on Crowded Riverside Park Path

By Leslie Albrecht | August 31, 2011 1:13pm | Updated on August 31, 2011 1:20pm

UPPER WEST SIDE — Cyclists have been given the green light to bike on a popular Riverside Park path, ending a year-long riding ban on the heavily traveled route.

The Parks Department has replaced "Cyclists Must Dismount" signs with "Bikers must yield to pedestrians at all times" placards on a path that many bike commuters use to access the Hudson River Greenway from West 72nd Street.

The roughly 10-foot-wide path is also popular with dog-walkers, parents with strollers, joggers, roller-bladers and seniors. Conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians prompted the Parks Department to put up the "dismount" signs in the summer of 2010, a step that some cyclists criticized as "ham-fisted."

This week cyclists cheered when the "dismount" signs disappeared.

"It's nice to see common sense prevail," wrote a commenter on a Streetsblog New York post about the signs.

But a woman walking her mixed poodle in the park Wednesday morning gave the more-lenient signs a thumbs down.

"They're useless," the woman grumbled. "There are some nice guys who go slow, but most [cyclists] just whiz down with absolutely no consideration."

A cyclist zipping along the path proved her point, barreling directly toward a couple walking two dogs.  "Watch out, watch out," the woman yelled, catching the biker's attention just before he would have become entangled in the dogs' leashes.

Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, a cycling advocacy group, has planned an outreach campaign on Sept. 8 from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., to urge cyclists to follow the new "go slow" directive.

Jeremy Zweig, an Upper West Sider who founded the New York Alliance for Pedestrian Safety, said he was skeptical that a public education effort could change cyclists' behavior. Zweig said he'll conduct a survey to see how many bikes slow down and yield to pedestrians, and present his findings to Community Board 7.

"Theoretically these signs should work," Zweig said in an email, "but in reality, there's not a great history of compliance or actual pedestrian safety improvement."