New Greenways Report Wows With Vision of NYC Future but How Realistic Is It Today?

There’s a new Greenways report in town! And if that seems like an odd thing to shout about, well, you should read it! It’s called Greater Greenways! It’s 90 pages long, and the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and the NYC Parks Department all signed off on it. For these people, words like “multi-use,” and “multi-modal” aren’t mere jargon, they’re a mission. Or, to exhort the New York State motto: Excelsior!

Exciting as exclaiming can be, because Greater Greenways is only partially extant—the rest is a collection of imaginings—it’s best that we pace ourselves, and ponder the meaning of “Greenways,” for one’s perception of them may differ from reality.

First, as in the Bible, comes the report’s Genesis, which was born from Local Law 115 of 2022. As the Greater Greenways report notes, this legislation was boosted by a group called the Greater Greenways Coalition, and co-sponsored by Carlina Rivera, who just resigned as a Council member in District 2, and Selvena Brooks-Powers, who still represents District 31 in southeast Queens.

Once enacted, the law mandated the present report, with annual updates following.

As a report—the creation of which Local Law 115 mandated, with annual updates following—Greater Greenways is professional, well-designed, and informative. On the surface, it gives the reader a real sense of care and competency among those who crafted it.

One highlight includes the preface by DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, who says, “In 2023, I took a great bicycle ride with Mayor Eric Adams from Washington Heights in northern Manhattan onto the High Bridge. After riding across, the Mayor announced an unprecedented effort to invest in a new greenway along the Harlem River in the Bronx.”

Would that all transportation-minded solons pedaled to ponder policy on their own two wheels!

“Open spaces like greenways are a critical element of our city’s quality of life,” Rodriguez continues, “but for too long, the options for our city’s pedestrians and cyclists to easily access our parks and waterfront have been at best a patchwork; most often, greenways were adjacent only to wealthier communities.”

Another report highlight is the detailed accounting of who controls the greenways, which is a complicated subject.

In Manhattan, for example, depending on the section, greenway jurisdiction is split between four entities: the Battery Park City Authority; the state Department of Transportation; the Parks Department; and the NYC DOT.

It’s also notable that in the amply illustrated Greater Greenways report, no e-bikes of any kind are shown, nor mopeds, scooters, motorized dirt bikes or four-wheeled Amazon delivery trucks disguised as “bicycles” either.

This last vehicle might require explanation. While in Manhattan, one sees these small bakery-truck-like vehicles taking up whole bike lanes; on the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, they travel in convoys heading out of Red Hook, home of three giant Amazon “last mile” warehouses. While these trucks do have pedals, the pedals are effectively a dead man’s switch for the vehicle’s electric motor, not their actual means of propulsion.

This was a clever design trick that would pay dividends in March 2024, when the DOT announced it had authorized the use of “E-Cargo Bikes”—more specifically a “pedal assist e-cargo bicycle”—on city streets.

The maximum dimensions of these so-called “bikes” betray the grand deception: 16 feet long, 48 inches wide, 84 inches high, meaning they are difficult to see around and impossible to see over if one is behind them.

While the DOT’s press release didn’t remind people that bike lanes are considered city streets, a photo of the agency’s own e-cargo truck, nicknamed “Cargi B,” showed it occupying nearly the full width of a green-painted bike lane.

As for greenways, if the DOT controls them, Amazon cargo trucks are allowed there also, ready, as of spring 2025, to roll up on little kids riding real pedal bicycles with decorative spoke reflectors; runners training for the marathon; parents pushing strollers; anyone.

Should Amazon or another delivery company desire, similar vehicles could appear on DOT’s Manhattan greenways. While these are mostly discontinuous segments on the East Side at present—where most of the extant greenway sections come under Parks’s jurisdiction—it’s an issue that bears watching for two reasons.

First, it exemplifies the DOT’s imperiousness, which affects many people in many ways. This includes the de-facto conversion of “bike lanes” to lawless corridors for commercial motor vehicles; long-delayed Canal Street safety upgrades; the recent Third Avenue “racetrack” design on the Upper East Side, and the overnight vanishing of Upper West Side parking spots, since rescinded, at least temporarily.

Second, the city’s Greenways are expanding! This is good news—in theory.

In Manhattan, this means providing a path along Spuyten Duyvil, the channel linking the Hudson and Harlem rivers; and completing the discontinuous East Side greenway, including along the United Nations and Harlem River waterfronts.

Moreover, the Greater Greenways report suggests a possible new “Greenway Corridor” stretching from the Brooklyn Bridge up to Washington Heights, skirting Central Park West in the middle.

While this proposal is speculative and has no suggested timeline, if constructed, it would almost certainly be under DOT jurisdiction. Which begs the question: whose Greenway Corridor?

Muscle-powered people or motor-powered cargo trucks, and an infinite number of unregistered speeding e-bikes?