COURTNEY CLARK TO THE RESCUE

This is the update for Monday, June 27. Today was a dreary, rainy day. I got into our crosswalk and began shooting clips at 10:44 AM. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and both pedestrian and vehicular traffic was very light. I set up the downstream camera in a new spot between the sidewalk and the roadway near where the hot dog vendor would normally be on a sunny day and shot clips with the hand-held until 11:06.

There were few pedestrians and those who used the crosswalk rarely called for the safe-to-cross signal so most of the clips are vehicles moving into and thru our crosswalk with some pocket radar speed readings. It began to rain harder later in the day and I did not return although I do intend to get some footage in the rain at some point just for reference.

Speaking of reference footage, on Saturday and Sunday I shot some reference footage of the crosswalks at 63rd and Broadway, just two blocks from our crosswalk and the difference in orderliness and safety from the crosswalk in Central Park at 63rd and West Drive is just stunning. Our Central Park crosswalk is a chaotic, dangerous mess while pedestrians enjoy relatively safe, orderly crosswalks a block from Lincoln Center. 

While I was shooting in the crosswalk this morning in the drizzle, I noticed that Roger Mosier had responded to my email about the CPC golf cart that dove into our crosswalk on red yesterday, going to the garbage cans at the 63rd Street entrance, cutting off pedestrians in the way. He said he would address the issue and asked how I got the multiple camera angles. When I returned to my office I responded with an explanation of the setup and suggested he read my daily updates if he had the time.

At 3:04 PM I decided to follow up my Sunday evening email to Shulamit Pruder, Chief of Staff for Gale Brewer, with a phone call. I reached her on the cell phone which was shown in her first email to me but she was in a meeting. She was very pleasant and accommodating and we agreed to schedule a time for a talk in the next few days when it was more convenient for both of our schedules.

After that, I considered nagging Mark Levine, Manhattan Burrough President, but decided that as long as we were making headway with Brewer, there was no need to irritate Levine's office. By then it was getting late in the afternoon and I felt the sense of losing focus, knowing there were more things I could do but not knowing exactly what should come next. By 8:26 PM I was working on the next update to the petition when I got an email from Courtney Clark who let me know I had missed the CB7 Parks and Environment Committee meeting that evening.

This was a major blunder. I thought the meeting was on Tuesday night. The next meeting will not be until September, which is past our Labor Day deadline. I almost made the same mistake with the NYPD Central Park Precinct Community Council meeting last week but was saved at the last moment when I reread the announcement page on the NYPD Central Park Precinct website. This time I was not so fortunate.

Courtney is a board member of CB7, serves on the Transportation Committee, and said she would help bring the crosswalk issue to the attention of both the Transportation Committee and the Parks and Environment Committee. In her email tonight she said that reps from the CPC were the guest speakers at tonight's CB7 Parks committee, and noted they said they're taking a holistic look at the issues of the drives in the parks (pedestrians, bikes, e-bikes, etc.)   She said she specifically flagged the intersection at 63rd and West Drive, citing the # of schools in the area, little league teams, etc. crossing into the park at all times of the day, and that the intersection is really problematic -- and asked them to make sure they take a special look at that area. Thank you, Courtney, for keeping the ball rolling while I was AWOL.

I finished the evening by reviewing the Parks and Environment Committee meeting agenda and writing another email to Roger Mosier, asking for an introduction to Erica Sopha, VP for Park Use & Stewardship. Erica was one of the two representatives who addressed the Parks and Environment Committee that evening and the only one whose wheelhouse specifically included our crosswalk.

Today's screengrab is the hugest truck coming thru our crosswalk. It demonstrates why a solution like zig-zagging the traffic would not work here.