As three major NYC bicycle systems converge at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx the "heart" of this system is missing in the form of the Old Putnam Rail Trail forcing cyclists to the city streets in order to connect with each other. The three systems are the Hudson River Greenway and it's offroad Bronx bike lanes through Spuyten Duyvil, the Pelham Bay Park Trail and the South/North County trail system in Westchester.
The Putnam Trail is a narrow, unpaved, most always muddy, impassable trail for bikes through the heart of Van Cortlandt. A number of organized nature organizations have been fighting the paving project, citing noise and wanting to keep the trail in it's natural state, for years. The final Community boards have finally approved the project with approval now needed from the NYC Public Design Commission ......considered a formality as the Commission approved in the past however a deadline had expired prior to Community approval.
Closing this gap has now created the longest, continuous, 95% off road, urban to suburban to rural cycling in the nation …..in the form of 3 major scenarios, however you can see other scearios on my special page.
1) Pelham Bay Park, Bronx to Brewster NY …..65miles
2) Battery Park, lower Manhattan up the Hudson River Greenway to Brewster, NY …….58 miles
3) Pelham Bay Park, Bronx to Battery Park …….25 miles
One can now cycle a “century” on a continuous off road bike path. Anyone living in Brooklyn or Queens can take, with bike, the East River Ferry from Long Island City, Greenpoint, North and South Williamsburg, and Brooklyn Bridge Park to 11 Wall St …..from 11 wall cycle to Battery Park and pick up the Hudson River Greenway there.
The "Power Broker"
Robert Moses! The most powerful, unelected, man for five decades of New York history. From the Triboro Bridge to the controversial Cross Bronx Expressway there is hardly any road, bridge or park that he did not build in New York during his tenure as Parks and roads Commissioner The story being told in Robert Caro's "The Power Broker".
The "Crown Jewel" of his accomplishments was Jones Beach. Today one of the best cycle trips, in NY and in the country really, is the Wantagh path to Jones Beach and onto Tobay Beach in the town of Oyster Bay. A short 16 miles, round trip, starting at Cedar Creek Park in the town of Seaford. I remember going to Jones Brach as a kid. My father would get 2 weeks vacation every year as a construction worker and as he did not have much money our vacation was a ride to Jones Beach every day. I became an "ocean rat".
Today I even cycle the Wantagh Trail in the Winter. From October to May you can come off the trail and ride the Boardwalk.
One of the most interesting aspects of Jones Beach are the directional "ironworks" signs that Mosees himself helped design as he bacame involved with even the smallest detail in the construction of Jones Beach.
The following is an excerpt from the "Power Broker" (pg 231) ......
"As always it was Jones Beach that Moses' imagination focused. He thought himself of many little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed there.
Why have signs just directing people to various activities? ....he asked. Why not decorate the signs with ironwork showing the activities .....and showing them in a humourous fashion? One day, a designer rather hesitantly showed him a design for the directional signs to the men's rooms. The design was the silhouette of a man, obviously in a desparate hurry, rushing to a bathroom so fast that the little boy he was dragging behind had his feet pulled off the ground. It was, of course, a little daring, the designer began. Daring!! Moses said. He wanted his designers to be daring. This was a great design!! ...he said. It would be used".
I have photographed all the Moses "ironworks" signs that still exist today on my cycle rides there. Unfortunately the sign of the father and boy does not exist anymore. You can see the entire collection on my Jones Beach page as i cropped out the actual directions retaining just the image design.
The "Highbridge"
It was not built to give New Yorkers expansive views of the Harlem River or a pedestrian shortcut between the Bronx and Manhattan. Rather, the monumental structure that is known as the High Bridge and echoes a Roman aqueduct opened in 1848 to bring fresh water from Westchester County to a booming young city.
But the vistas and easy access afforded by the bridge transformed the still-rural stretch of the river into a pleasure ground in the late 1800s. There were regattas, a speedway for horse and carriage races (now the Harlem River Drive), and the 123-foot-tall bridge itself — a parade route for fashionistas of the day.
After being closed for more than four decades, the High Bridge reopened 2015, its 1,450-foot length newly burnished after a $61.8 million restoration. A marching band and speeches by city officials broadcast the fact that a city that invests huge sums in its future can also invest in its past.
“This is almost the eighth wonder of the world,” the Manhattan borough president, Gale A. Brewer, said. “There really are no words to describe it. The opening of the High Bridge means that Manhattan will be connected to the continental United States by its one and only pedestrian bridge.”
The restoration, financed mostly by the city but with some Federal Highway Administration money, included re-mortaring the stone joints, repainting the steel, repairing the brick walkway and restoring the antique handrail, as well as installing decorative lighting, ramps and safety fencing.
Walking across the bridge toward Manhattan on Tuesday, one could see the Citicorp tower and the Chrysler Building through the morning haze to the south. Straight ahead loomed the High Bridge Water Tower, a handsome granite structure and city landmark that will soon undergo restoration.
Beneath the bridge flowed the greenish Harlem River, whose banks are studded with unfussy apartment buildings.
Embedded in the bridge’s walkway are large bronze medallions offering brief history lessons. Under the heading “Thirsty City,” a plaque instructs that from 1861 to 1864, “public demand for water outpaced the capacity of the two original 3-foot pipes.” It continues, “A 7.5-foot wrought iron pipe was added, covered by a new brick walkway.” The aqueduct remained in service until the 1950s.
For residents of the Bronx, the restored bridge provides a faster route to the 130-acre Highbridge Park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, with its huge Depression-era swimming pool and recreation center. The bridge is open to pedestrians and bicyclists daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., closing earlier in the winter.
Also present were members of some of the advocacy groups that had pressed the city to revive the High Bridge. Robert J. Kornfeld Jr., an architect and vice president of Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct, frequently lectures on the aqueduct’s history.
“It was a real engineering feat at that time to bring water from the Croton River 40 miles away to the city,” he said, standing on the bridge’s brick walkway. “Pretty soon after the High Bridge opened, they allowed pedestrians on it. People loved it from the start.”
New York City, Tops in the Country!
New York City was named the top U.S. city for bicycling by “Bicycling” magazine, officials announced.
Starting under former mayor Michael Bloomberg and continuing under Mayor de Blasio, the city has been transforming its streetscape, creating bike lanes to encourage bicycling and redesigning intersections to make roadways safer for cyclists.
The city has more than 900 miles of bike lanes across its five boroughs, with more than 600 of those on city streets. And Citi Bikes, the bike-sharing program sponsored by Citibank, launched in Manhattan in 2013.
This year, the city Department of Transportation is on pace to add over 58 new bike-lane miles to its network, one of the largest single-year expansions, the agency said.
“As ‘Bicycling’ magazine notes, New York has — against all odds — embraced, and has been transformed by, a mode of transportation which is inexpensive, burns no fuel, emits no carbon, helps tackle obesity, connects people to their communities and — let’s face it — brings joy,” said DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg.
New York isn’t as cycling-centric as some cities in Europe, but Trottenberg said Gotham supplies its own attitude to two-wheeled travel.
“New Yorkers love to cycle and they bring an energy and passion that only this city can produce. I want to thank the past leadership at DOT and our current bike lane innovators who helped make New York the best biking city in the U.S,” she said.
The “Bicycling” magazine ranking compared cities with populations of 100,000 or greater. The city came in 7th place in the magazine’s previous ranking, which was done two years ago.
The Van Cortlandt Gap
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Click here for for detailed trip information
The Most Famous Street in America
Looking to create different riding routes this Spring I came across an article in the NYT’s last Sunday. As I have ridden many times across the Triboro Bridge to Wards and Randalls Islands in the East River, and many times onto Manhattan and Harlem via the Wards Island pedestrian bridge across the Harlem River, the article featured the grand opening of a new bike and pedestrian bridge from Randalls Island in the East River to the South Bronx. The bridge was built under the Hell Gate train arches across a narrow waterway, on the north side of the island, called the Bronx Kill. I immediately went to Google and realized the bridge on the Bronx side easily put me onto a prominent road with a bike lane …Prospect Ave. The road would take me through the heart of the South Bronx leading to Crotona Park and, as I remembered long ago, “The Most Famous Street in America” …….Charlotte St.
I decided then that Charlotte St , using the new bridge, would be my destination today starting in Astoria, Queens.
Charlotte St?? …yes Charlotte St in the South Bronx !J ….It’s length stretches from Crotona Park to Jennings St …..a mere three tenths of a mile or 1,614 feet. Yet the street was symbolic of what was wrong in American cities in the 1970’s and 80’s as presented in the movies of the time, within their plots ….The French Connection, Serprico and Fort Apache, The Bronx . ….severe poverty and urban blight. The LA Times called the South Bronx … “a place and a scare-word” (LOL!!! ..always loved that one) …and I surely would agree as I personally “skirted” the area a number of times in my 20’s….quickly!! The New York Times commented that the South Bronx was "as crucial to an understanding of American urban life as Auschwitz is crucial to an understanding of Nazism."
Charlotte St, in the South Bronx, was made famous forever by the visit of a sincere President Jimmy Carter in 1977, who vowed to free up billions in Fed money for urban renewal there but could never keep that promise (you caint throw money at a problem). Next up was Ronald Reagan, in 1980, and on his visit to Charlotte St he associated the South Bronx with a “bombed out London in WW 2”. Not sure what his proposals were.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s Charlotte St’s transformation became a national model for urban renewal that remains unprecedented today. ……you can read that story here ….. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/…/19…/9904.worth.bronx.html.
The final visit to Charlotte St by a US President was Bill Clinton in 1997 in an effort to show off Charlotte St as a model of that urban improvement.
Much of the blame for the South Bronx was laid on Robert Moses who rammed the Cross Bronx Expressway down the center of an already densely populated area (The Bronx) splitting neighborhoods apart. Using Eminent Domain to bludgeon poor people out of their homes and recruiting the city to turn off their water and heat if they did not move fast enough. The building of the Sheridan and Bruckner Expressways to compliment the CBE only exasperated the problem along with the building of Co-Op City in Baychester, Bronx that subsequently pulled away the remainder of middle class families from the South Bronx resulting in abandonment, insurance fires, property destruction, abandoned cars and building demolition as drug dealers, prostitution and street gangs filled the void.
Always the Robert Moses answer to the constant traffic problem in NYC was to build another road ….. and he always stated afterwards ……“it will get bettor”. But it never did as he was too “pro car” …and too “anti public transportation” …..and he possessed the power! As new roads were being built the subways deteriorated. Of course you can read the story in Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” …my personal all time favorite. The story of the Cross Bronx is a book within a book in trying to understand why Moses looped the road through the densely populated East Tremont section of the Bronx rather than keep the road straight along Crotona Park saving 1500 apartments and thus disrupting less lives …..and, of course, the homely, but tenacious, Jewish housewife, Lillian Edelman, who took the great and powerful Moses on …..and almost beat him. The only equal to Lillian was Father Louis Gigante, brother of the famed mobster Vincent "the Chin" Gigante. Father Louis founded the Southeast Bronx Community Organization and successfully organized his Hunts Point constituents to rebuild dozens of abandoned buildings for low-income local people. Today that is called urban renewal vs Gentrification. Those who lived in NY in the 80’s remember Vincent (The Chin) feigning Alzheimer’s in an attempt to get out from under racketeering charges by the Fed. He was on the news all the time like Donald Trump today, however his brother, the good priest, was a virtual unknown.
Today Charlotte St is unrecognizable in contrast to the 70’s and 80’s and my goal was too cycle to it, photograph it, and the surrounding South Bronx area, in juxtaposition to archived photos of that period.
Charlotte St today is out of place with the rest of the South Bronx.. “A bad fit”. Suburban Long Island ranch homes in the middle of an extreme urban environment. A Politicians shiny little “show place” after 3 Presidential visits housing maybe 50 families when it could be providing affordable housing for a thousand or more.
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June 2016
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