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Central Park's car-free loop is busier than ever. Crashes keep piling up.
By
Liam Quigley
Published Oct 7, 2026
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CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
By
Liam Quigley
Published Oct 7, 2026
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Central Park is more popular than ever, with more than 100,000 people walking, jogging and biking through the city’s best-known greenspace every day.
But all that activity has led to a growing sense of chaos along the park’s 6-mile loop, where three people have died in crashes since June.
The latest came on Monday, when police said a 71-year-old man fell from his bike on East Drive near 84th Street while trying to avoid a golden retriever that crossed the busy roadway while off its leash. A 41-year-old man walking at the same intersection was hit and killed by a cyclist last month. And in June, a teen tourist died on West Drive after falling from a runaway horse-drawn carriage.
Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio banned cars from Central Park in 2018, two years before state lawmakers legalized e-bikes in the city. Now, the devices are more popular than ever, and they’re joined by thousands of people on illegal two-wheelers who zoom along the park’s loop. Running and conventional cycling have both exploded in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the park offers a rare place in Manhattan where people can exercise without worrying about car traffic.
All those people — and horses — now compete for dwindling space along the park loop that was dominated by cars only a decade ago.
“We're still fighting over the same limited patches of land,” said attorney Peter Beadle, who’s representing a local cycling club suing the city to block a 15 mph speed limit for bikes in the park imposed last year by then-Mayor Eric Adams.
“We used to be fighting with the cars,” Beadle said. “Now it's runners and cyclists. You go at 6 in the morning, 6:30 in the morning, and it's like the two tribes. The runners on the left, the cyclists on the right.”
Some longtime parkgoers said the crashes show the need for more cycling infrastructure around the park and more space for general recreation in Manhattan. And others said banning all electric-powered devices would make the park safer for everyone.
“I would not say ban bikes from Central Park, I would say ban e-bikes or e-mobility,” said transportation analyst Sam Schwartz, who served as the city's traffic commissioner in the 1980s. “And the standup scooters, in my mind, are some of the worst offenders, going at incredible speeds.”
John Tomlinson, who’s been cycling in Central Park since the 1980s, said the loop used to be desolate early in the morning, making it ideal for cyclists to train at high speeds. Now, he said the road is crowded with people at nearly any hour of the day.
“It's kind of a victim of New York's success,” he said. “When I started riding in the '80s as a teenager it was assumed that if you went into the park at night, you would get robbed.”
Runners and cyclists cruised along East Drive on Tuesday, a day after a 71-year-old man died after falling from his bike while veering around an off-leash dog.
Liam Quigley / Gothamist
Last year, the city’s transportation department began overhauling the loop and tweaking intersections to give pedestrians more space and reduce conflicts with cyclists. The change followed a 2024 safety study commissioned by the Central Park Conservancy and the city that recommended installing protected two-way bicycle lanes on every street that surrounds the park to give cyclists alternative routes.
The city has not yet followed through on the recommendations for those new bike lanes. Central Park West currently has a one-way protected bike lane, and 110th Street has an unprotected lane for cyclists. But the park’s two other borders — 59th Street and Fifth Avenue — lack any cycling infrastructure.
The city began to redesign the Central Park loop three months before a cyclist died after hitting a pedestrian and falling from his bike on East Drive near 97th Street. It was the first death from a crash on the loop since an e-bike rider died after hitting a pedestrian in August 2019.
Elizabeth Marcello, who previously served on the board of the Century Road Club Association that organizes bicycle races in the park, said the recent deaths represent a broader failure of infrastructure to meet the public’s needs.
“If we want to have a serious conversation about how to make New Yorkers happy and how to create a better New York that allows people to recreate, we need to be talking about more places for people to ride bikes, more places for people to run, more places for people to walk and walk their dogs,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Central Park Conservancy said it’s crucial for people to abide by laws and regulations while in the park.
"Central Park was created more than 150 years ago to provide a peaceful, joyful respite for all from the intense pace and pressures of the surrounding city,” the spokesperson, Kat Brady, wrote in a statement. “The park cannot continue to serve that purpose unless all New Yorkers hold to the essential agreement of public space: Know and follow the rules, and respect your fellow visitors.”
Vincent Barone, a spokesperson for the city's Department of Transportation, said the agency has worked to redesign the drives to create more pedestrian and cycling space.
“We are continuously evaluating the design and will make any adjustments as needed,” Barone said.
Transportation officials said the agency is continuing to explore additional bike infrastructure to and around the park to give people other commuting options.
Parks department officials said the owner of the dog that sparked Monday’s crash did not receive a ticket. The NYPD did not respond to questions about how many tickets it had issued to dog owners or cyclists in the park this year.
Bella Bebe, a professional dog walker who moved to the city from Pennsylvania three months ago, said she was on high alert while she walked along the park's west side near 81st Street on Tuesday.
“[It’s] definitely very overstimulating, but you get used to it,” she said. “I mean, it's New York City.”
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manhattan
new york city
parks
public safety
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Liam Quigley
Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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