Confusing Signs Removed After Cyclists Ticketed, Police Apologize via House Call
While the speed limit is actually 25 mph, decades-old signs wrongly posted that the speed limit is 15 mph. Police said they had followed those old signs.
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Early Tuesday morning, police set up a radar speed trap in Central Park. They snagged 10 cyclists for going over the posted speed limit for bicycles of 15 m.p.h. during the car free hours of the park. David Regen was one of them. He was surprised to get pulled over just after one of the park's biggest hills.
"I've been riding in Central Park probably for 25 years and I've never been stopped by a police officer for anything before," he said. What was more unusual though, was what happened 13 hours later around dinnertime when police showed up at his door and told him he was treated unfairly and withdrew the ticket.
"I thought it was extraordinary that they came, physically to my door, that two officers came to my door to tell me this," he said.
Listen to an interview with Regen:
NYPD took the proactive step of personally visiting the cited cyclists to withdraw the tickets after they realized the summonses were issued as motor vehicle violations under the Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL) when they should have been summonses for violating park regulations.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Paul Browne said in an email, "The officers apparently erroneously issued moving violations, instead of summonses for violating park rules, to nine of the 10 cyclists who were riding at 22 to 25 mph, as documented by radar. They were in violation of the park rules (i.e. the 15 mph limit), but not the VTL (i.e.25 mph limit)." The tenth cyclist was going so fast, 28 m.p.h. that he was violating the VTL.
Cyclist Greg Lowdermilk was also ticketed and captured his conversation with police on tape. A bike blog quickly compiled several accounts from cyclists' perspectives and posted regulations about bike speed limits, fueling a sense among the cycling community that they are being targeted.
Dave Jordan, a triathalon coach and President of Century Road Club Association said "this is just another nail in the coffin for cycling in central park. Especially if they are doing it on a downhill. There's no way you can not do 15 mph on anything but a mountain bike."
The speed limit, however, is actually 25 m.p.h WNYC has learned. There was confusion about the official limit Wednesday because old signs posted in the 1990s declare the speed limit for bikes to be 15 m.p.h. when cars are not in the park. So that's what the Police operated on during their early morning radar enforcement.
When asked what the speed limit is the Department of Transportation referred WNYC to the Parks Department. Spokeswoman Vickie Karp gave WNYC this statement:
“Any vehicle using the roadways, including cyclists, are supposed to observe standard speed limits for those roadways. The standard speed limit in both Prospect and Central Park is 25 miles per hour, as designated by the Department of Transportation, which is in charge of setting speed limits for the city. It is true that there are a few old signs in Central Park, placed there by the Central Park Conservancy (CPC) in the late 1990s, that say 15 miles per hour. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. CPC is removing them today.”
When made aware of this action by the CPC, the Police Department said they would enforce the posted speed limit.
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