Editorial comment: Paved with good intentions

When Robert Moses cut Riverdale in two by thrusting the Henry Hudson Parkway through its center, he at least provided the compensation of a handsome road that offered drivers a lovely view.

The Henry Hudson was landscaped with imagination and care. Split rail fences bordered its plantings, preserving a rustic feeling. The signs, too, were rustic and modest in size. The bridges that carried local traffic over the parkway were graceful archways faced in native stone: even Moses' most incisive critic, the biographer Robert Caro, marveled at them, calling them "little Moses masterpieces."

Eighty years later, the volume of traffic has increased exponentially, and the ambling speed limit that enticed drivers and their passengers to gaze about them with pleasure has given way to the urge to get to or away from the city as quickly as possible.

As a result, for the last half century, maintaining the parkway has not meant maintaining its beauty but increasing its capacity for traffic and speed. Each major renovation has been an act of civic vandalism, abetted, ironically, by well-meaning local politicians trying to serve their constituents in the way they know best - by procuring funds.

In 1979 Rep. Ted Weiss boasted proudly that he had been able to secure millions in federal highway money for a thorough renovation of the parkway. Then it turned out that the highway engineers intended to cut down 230 trees along the roadway. But they would plant some nice shrubs, they promised.

Riverdalians rebelled, and saved all but 30 of the trees; needless to say, the promised new plantings did not materialize. Instead, the most visible legacy of that overhaul is the abundance of massive green highway signs, designed for the Interstate system.

Councilman Oliver Koppell is sympathetic to the efforts of the Riverdale Nature Preservancy and the Henry Hudson Parkway Scenic Byway Initiative to protect the parkway, so he has tried horse-trading with the city's highway engineers and with City Hall. He has agreed to spend funds he controls on the parkway and to back Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan; in return, he has demanded attention to aesthetics as the city repairs the parkway's overpasses and replaces its fences.

The results have been dismaying.

While the overpasses are now topped with more attractive fencing than the chainlink the city wanted to deface them with, they are also hemmed in by metal collision barriers with striped yellow snouts.

The collision barriers also eclipse the new wooden guardrails Mr. Koppell fought so hard for.

These unintended consequences are the result of a failure to plan comprehensively, to review the blueprints with an eye to design and to keep a close watch on how the construction is actually going forward.

And worse is likely to come. Last week, the Department of Transportation admitted that work on the 252nd Street overpass, which began in 2006 and was supposed to be completed in a year, won't be finished until the spring of 2009.

Parishioners of Christ Church Riverdale and residents generally are right to be angry at the incompetence that has marked the project. They should be apprehensive, as well.

Without a steady focus on restoring the bridge's graceful lines and its stone façade, the temptation of a red-faced city agency will be to get the overpass open to traffic and to hell with how it looks.

Soon Con Edison's contractors will begin tearing up the parkway service road to install a power line. Not only will the utility be hacking down trees, but, its contractors will also likely damage plantings by compacting the soil over their roots with construction materials and heavy equipment.

If Riverdale's residents don't step forward to demand that their elected representatives and the community board pay attention to the parkway's appearance, the deterioration of the parkway and its plantings, bridges and service roads will continue until there will be little left to preserve.

Then, as the Henry Hudson Task Force warned in the fall, we will wake up to find that the parkway has been transformed from a "scenic and recreational corridor designed for the benefit of both motorists and residents into an ugly expressway with blighted overpasses and orphan public spaces."

Efforts to restore the beauty of the Henry Hudson Parkway continue to take a back seat to the imperatives of the automobile.

This is part of the February 28, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you. Click here.