Prospect Park Establishes Road Safety Task Force

Prospect Park wants to know how it can make its roadways safer.

After a brutal bicycle-pedestrian collision on the park’s main thoroughfare inspired one park goer calling for better-defined road rules in the park, the Prospect Park Alliance has founded the Prospect Park Road Sharing Task Force.

“It is important that everyone using Prospect Park does so in a way that is safe for themselves and others. This is particularly true when it comes to safety and use of the Park Drives,” the park said in a statement.

The task force will examine how “the full range of park users” use park roadways, and will  include everyone from runners groups and bike racing organizations to the park’s Community and Playground Committees, the Police Department, Department of Transportation and Councilmember Brad Lander’s office.

“Our goal is to examine together how the various uses intersect and, if there is potential conflict, how those uses could be clarified or amended to foster safer behaviors,” the park’s statement said.

The original petition, written by Kensington lighting designer Mark Simpson, Simpson’s petition called for several measures that Simpson says would help improve park traffic safety, including painting lanes on the main drive to more accurately reflect which lanes are for cyclists and which are for runners and pedestrians (the current painted bicycle lane is meant to be used only when the park is open to car traffic).

Simpson’s petition also called for more signage clearly displaying intended lane usage, move fast bikes to the center lanes, doubling the number of crosswalks and placing yellow flashing lights into the crosswalk lines at the traffic signal crosswalks, where cyclists would be required to stop and wait for any pedestrians to cross before moving onward.

Simpson, for one, was thrilled with the news of the task force.

“It's pretty great,” he said. “I didn't expect to get any response so fast.  I sent the petition last weekend and got a call from the Prospect Park Alliance on Tuesday to explain the task force.”

He said that the task force will discuss some of the ideas brought up in his petition, which is still up online.

In the meantime, park goers are encouraged to send suggestions to either the  Park Administrator’s or Lander’s office.