Controversial boulder placement blocks pedestrian pathway on Riverdale's 254th Street project

The discussion of a sidewalk on West 254th Street leading up from the Metro-North station has lasted nearly 15 years.

IZANIA GONZALEZ

It sort of defies imagination as to what meeting happened where somebody proposed that and somebody said that’s a great idea.”

Kevin Slavin, Riverdale resident

4th Street by Riverdale Avenue is underway, but the project has taken a turn for what some residents think is the worst. 

As of a few weeks ago, locals have noticed rocks — boulders, more precisely — have been placed along what was once the pedestrian walkway leading up from the Riverdale Metro-North station at the bottom of West 254th Street. 

For context, in March, the city’s design and construction department attended Community Board 8’s traffic and transportation committee meeting to offer an update on the project slated for the narrow and winding road, which lacks a real pedestrian walkway.

These revisions go back as far as 2010, when SAR Academy inquired about placing a sidewalk on the street for the safety of the school’s children. In 2017, the traffic and transportation committee submitted a resolution, requesting a sidewalk be installed, from Riverdale Avenue to Palisade Avenue, on the north side of the street alongside the high school’s property.

The street is a long and windy hill with little to no shoulder space and plenty of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. 

When the city presented the plans to the board, officials clarified the project was in the very beginning stages and finalized design plans would not be available until later in the year, with plans to follow up and discuss land acquisition with the community at a later, undetermined date. 

The design from March included sidewalks on both sides of the street, trees planted along the walkway, adding street lightning, signage and ADA complaint ramps and crosswalks.  

The project is a large undertaking, involving not just the department of design and construction but transportation and environmental protection as well. In its current discussions, the project would require land acquisition in order to carve out the sidewalk, which would also require addressing the public in order to acquire the land necessary to construct the walkway. 

Kevin Slavin lives in Riverdale and uses the Riverdale Metro-North station to commute back and forth to work. To him, the recently placed boulders feel like a bad omen. 

In November 2023, plastic delineators were placed on the north side of the street on the shoulder to designate a pedestrian pathway while the city figured out how to implement a more permanent solution.

This solution, Slavin said, went wrong almost immediately.

“For about 12 hours, it functioned as a pedestrian path and it became parking spaces and then it became far more dangerous,” he said.

Slavin said cars began parking on the other side of the delineators as if the markers had been placed there to designate parking spots rather than where pedestrians are free to safely travel.

The boulders start between Independence Avenue and Sycamore Avenue, continuing down to the bottom of the hill at the station. 

When the city presented the plan to the board, officials noted the current roadway lacks accessible pedestrian ramps, making it all but impossible for someone in need of an ADA-compliant walkway to travel the street. 

With the current boulders placed on the path, Slavin said it feels like a parody that such a decision would have been made. 

“It sort of defies imagination as to what meeting happened where somebody proposed that and somebody said that’s a great idea,” he said. 

The boulders, while doing the job of blocking cars from parking on the other side of the delineators are now also blocking pedestrians from the walkway.

At best, Slavin said, a particularly thin or agile person could wind around the boulders but anyone else would end up walking in the street and he’s watched it happen.

On his commutes into and out of work, he said he watches people walk into the street as it is now the only space for them to travel. In addition, Slavin is certain a person walking a stroller would wind up in the street. 

Slavin said he’s unsure why this project was undertaken when other pressing roadway issues persist in Riverdale, and he doesn’t feel like the community, specifically the residents living in and using this area, was properly addressed on the matter. 

“I think, as signals go, this little action by the city is a bad signal,” Slavin said. 

The transportation department did not respond to requests for comment at press time.