Parks paves the way to waste

Why is it that when it comes to parks, we seem to get only what we don’t ask for?
The Parks Department is still trying to figure out how to grow grass on the Van Cortlandt Park Parade Ground years after beginning its restoration and only now is it beginning to clean up Sid Augarten Field near PS 81, where little leaguers have for far too long played through an obstacle course of pebbles, pot holes and puddles.

But when it comes to turning an idyllic woodland pathway into a bicycle speedway with a slick asphalt surface, the department is all over it.
Runners, casual strollers and bikers have long shared the pleasures of the Putnam Trail in the Van Cortlandt Park woods. Rotted wooden railroad ties — the remains of an excursion line that carried weekenders to Putnam County — still poke through the rutted dirt path in some places. Though the rough surface slows bikers down, it certainly has not stopped them from using and enjoying it.

Since the abandonment of the train line in the late 1950s, trees and shrubs have enveloped the trail. Take a mid-September weekend walk under its leafy boughs and cyclists will pass by and wave to you from rugged mountain bikes, narrow-tired road bikes and even the occasional little two-wheeler with training wheels.
Drainage is a problem in spots, so are clumps of poison ivy plants. But there is also an abundance of shade in the summer, protection from winds in the winter and cushioning for shins and kneecaps year-round.

Bikers interviewed on the trail all said they’d like to see Parks do a better job of maintaining it, but more than one agreed that the same stone dust used to pave the running track around the Parade Ground, or even a little attention to drainage issues, would satisfy them. Even without the improvements, they still found themselves basking in the trail’s beauty.