Editorial

Celebrating the river is not enough

Posted

Last Sunday’s RiverFest may have been the best yet. The annual event brings hundreds of people down to the Hudson River at the College of Mount St. Vincent’s campus.

Entertainers, tall ships and food and craft vendors virtually guarantee that everyone will have a good time, but the festivities have a serious purpose. 

They are held every year to remind Riverdalians that we are stewards of a precious resource and to keep the hope alive that we will be able to experience that resource first-hand and up close.

A group calling itself the Friends of the Hudson River Greenway in the Bronx (FHRG) — headed by environmental activist Paul Elston — has done a lot to move the ball in that direction, including securing federal funding for the now infamous study by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Association (NYMTC) for a three-stage plan to add a link through the community to the statewide Hudson River Greenway.

That plan was soundly — and rightly — rejected when it was presented to Community Board (CB) 8 because it’s overpriced interim stages couldn’t solve the problems of bicycle traffic on local streets and through Riverdale Park.

Fortunately, FHRG has not given up. Their statement in the RiverFest program outlines a new approach, abandoning costly interim stages and pushing for immediate construction of a path at the river’s edge from the Spuyten Duyvil Triangle to Yonkers.

A key stumbling block to that path is a recalcitrant Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which controls the Metro-North tracks hard by the shoreline.

Thanks to CB 8, there’s new pressure on the MTA to work with Greenway planners and allow access to what, by the way, is a park which has, for years, been mapped right out to the low tide line.

Metro-North’s argument against the Greenway is twofold. 

First, the railroad fears flooding from storms like Sandy. But park designers have already proved that natural features can actually mitigate the danger of flooding.

Second, a railroad spokesman has said, heavy equipment used on a service road adjacent to the tracks “cannot be co-located with a functioning Greenway.”

Residents who have observed the way Metro-North actually uses that road know that argument is nonsense. 

The road is used frequently, but not daily. And when it is used, most often the vehicles are pick-up trucks or vans no larger than those used by the Department of Parks and Recreation in other parks.

When heavy work needs to be done, the Greenway could be closed until the work is finished. 

Surely, even suffering through occasional months-long closures of a riverfront park would be preferable to having no park at all.

Greenway, RiverFest

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