NYC Advocates Push to Extend Car Bans Beyond Central, Prospect Parks

Five years of car-free roads ended in 2026 on Freedom Drive in Forest Park, Queens, and Silver Lake Park Road on Staten Island, when personal vehicles were allowed back under former Mayor Eric Adams. Now the advocacy coalition Secure NY4P is pressing Mayor Mamdani to reverse course and build something more durable: a citywide plan to eliminate private cars from all New York City parks.

The coalition is calling on Mamdani, along with NYC Parks and the Department of Transportation, to develop a plan this year to reduce and eliminate personal vehicle traffic across the park system while maintaining emergency access, parks operations, and essential services.

The push draws on a track record of incremental change. Prospect Park and Central Park fully banned private cars in 2018, following decades of public pressure and gradual traffic reduction. Before that, motorists had been barred from loop drives in the northern part of Central Park since 2015. The 800-plus-acre Manhattan landmark now draws more than 42 million visitors a year, with its roads returned to walkers, runners, and cyclists. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced the full Central Park ban, framed the policy as a return to the park's original purpose: "This was not the purpose of this park, to be built for automobiles. Literally, it was built before there were automobiles. It was built for people."

The 2020 Open Streets program carried that model to neighborhood parks, making both Freedom Drive and Silver Lake Park Road car-free. Both roads proved popular: when Adams restored car access in his final weeks, sizable protests broke out in both parks, and petition drives opposing the reversals collected around 1,000 signatures each. Critics argued Adams prioritized political considerations over public safety and park quality.

Secure NY4P frames the reversals as a systemic failure, not just a local one. "Across the five boroughs, active roadways cut through many major parks, dividing communities and putting pedestrians, cyclists, older adults, and children at risk in places meant for rest, play, and connection," the group argues. Its proposed citywide plan would set clear goals, prioritize safety and equity, and treat park roads as part of the city's broader safe streets strategy rather than as exceptions to it.

The group also points to a positive counterexample: the removal of cars from Driggs Avenue in McCarren Park, which it cites as evidence of what is achievable with political will.

Mayor Mamdani and DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn have said they aim to create city streets that are the "envy of the world," designed to safely accommodate walking, cycling, bus riding, and driving. Secure NY4P's rejoinder is direct: "If New York truly wants streets that are the envy of the world, that vision must include the streets inside our parks."

Any citywide plan would face genuine operational tradeoffs. Even in Central Park, where the ban covers the whole park, four transverse roadways built into the park's original design remain open to vehicles, and emergency access has been preserved throughout. The coalition's plan explicitly accounts for those constraints, calling for maintained emergency access, parks operations, and essential services. The harder question is whether Mamdani will apply that framework to the park roads across the five boroughs where cars still run through space advocates argue belongs unambiguously to the public.