Drivers have retaken previously car-free drives in two outer-borough parks, under car-friendly rules imposed by former Mayor Eric Adams — and Mayor Mamdani has not only failed to reverse his predecessor’s decision, but actually brought cars back into one of the parks several weeks ahead of schedule.
“To me it’s baffling, the silence from this administration,” said Andrew Smith, who organizes for a car-free Freedom Drive with the group Safer Streets Richmond Hill. “They’ve had nine months to look at this.”
In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, city leaders banned car traffic from Freedom Drive in Forest Park in Queens and Silver Lake Park Road in Silver Lake Park on Staten Island. Both corridors belonged to a larger batch of open streets that gave more New Yorkers places to recreate outdoors without risking infection. Then-Council Speaker Corey Johnson celebrated the move as “an exciting day for an entire city starved of adequate open space.”…