Traffic Issues

Cars are now allowed in the park because the traffic pressure throughout the city is so high that traffic engineers are desperate for any bit of pavement that will relieve our overcrowded streets. Unfortunately, allowing cars into Central Park fails to address the bottlenecks that cause congestion.

The high concentration of vehicular traffic in Manhattan during rush hour is caused by commuters from the suburbs. Everyday 100,000's of them stream into the city. The roads can't handle them, and the traffic overloads the system.

In order to understand the role of the loop road, it is important to dissect the traffic flow at rush hour. During the morning rush hour, the primary cluster that concerns us can be called midtown Manhattan. Cars come from all directions jamming up the streets of Midtown. The streets flowing into Midtown back up as cars fill the streets faster than they can drain. In the midst of this mess, Avenues on the Upper East Side and Upper West side back up even though the capacity of these streets is greater than needed. While opening the loop road to traffic provides a short cut for some people to  of midtown, it creates traffic problems on the alternate roads.

The reverse process takes place every evening. Traffic backs up from the George Washington Bridge and Cross Bronx Expressway down the Harlem River River Drive and Henry Hudson Parkway all the way to midtown. Once again, Manhattan has adequate North-South road capacity. Opening the loop road to traffic increases the North-South road capacity of Manhattan but does nothing to fix the bottlenecks that are at the heart of the congestion.

New York has a traffic problem. The roads of the city are a dangerous oppressive mess. That is no reason to make our parks dangerous and burdonsome.