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City Unveils New Design For 81st Street Pedestrian Bridge

By Shaye Weaver | December 4, 2015 6:10pm | Updated on December 7, 2015 8:54am
 Residents who live on East 81st Street are unhappy with the city's plans to put a wheelchair accessible ramp in their cul-de-sac.
Residents who live on East 81st Street are unhappy with the city's plans to put a wheelchair accessible ramp in their cul-de-sac.
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Department of Design and Construction

YORKVILLE — The city revealed a new design and renderings of a plan to upgrade the East 81st Street pedestrian bridge connecting the neighborhood to the East River.

The Department of Design and Construction has been in the process of tearing down the existing bridge and replacing it — a project that's been ongoing for the past decade, and is still in its design phase.

The agency presented revised plans for the new bridge to Community Board 8's transportation committee on Wednesday, showing staircases, two wheelchair ramps and transparent walls along the bridge with views of the East River.

The bridge is currently only accessible by stairs going up from East 81st Street and is protected by a metal fence.

New ADA-friendly ramps will lead up from the esplanade to the bridge and from the bridge to East 81st Street.

The plan to renovate the bridge was welcomed by residents, but they were concerned the wheelchair ramps, which make a u-shape on their way down to the street will take up too much space and potentially block a service entrance to residential buildings nearby at 45 and 33 East End Ave., according to Scott Falk, the co-chair of CB8's transportation committee.

"It's not an anti-access thing, the committee is pro-accessibility, it is just that the specific designs presented have absolutely seemed that they'd have a negative impact on 100 percent of the residents of that block," he said.

The committee suggested moving the ramp to East 82nd Street or East 84th Street instead.

"This was one of our chief concerns all along," Falk said. "The DDC said it couldn’t do anything different than what was proposed last year, so there was a lot of dissatisfaction with that answer."

But moving the ramp from East 81st Street would be impossible because it must be placed near the stairwells, for equal access purposes, Falk said.

Additionally, members of the committee asked that the glass panels on the bridge portion continue down to the ramps and stairs, instead of the "chicken wire" fencing that's being proposed, according to Falk.

The project was first introduced in 2005 and then again in 2012, when the pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street was finished. 

While infrastructure work has already begun on the East 81st Street bridge, its design has been a point of contention among residents on that street for some time.

To hammer out the final details, the DDC and the city's Parks Department said they would continue its discussion with the community in January.

The design is still pending approval from the Department of Transportation