NO EXIT
Enter on foot here, at the Ballpark Esplanade's western edge near Jersey Street at Richmond Terrace, and you'll find there's no way out for more than half a mile.
Unless you
can scale a story-and-a- half-high masonry wall (on the right in the photo at left, camouflaged by vegetation), your only option, if there's a problem,
is to swim to safety in the Kill van Kull. So it's not unreasonable to ask yourself, Do I really want to take the risk?
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
I'm sure the people who designed the Ballpark Esplanade didn't plan it as a trap for walkers, runners and cyclists. But that's what it is.
What they were thinking about, more likely, was ballpark customer logistics, tourist revenues and parking-fee receipts--and as always, the needs of cars and drivers, not the needs of walkers, runners or cyclists. This, despite the roadway paint job featuring international walker and cyclist symbols, now fading; despite all the lovely Greenway signs, which require interpretive skills I seem to lack.
Because the farther you get from the ferry terminal, the fewer and more bare-bones the amenities become . . . until, following the shoreline, the esplanade becomes a strip of concrete bordering a macadam roadway.
The only way in or out is at the extremes: at the southeastern end, near the ballpark and the ferry terminal, or at the western end, at Jersey Street and Richmond Terrace. The more-than-half-a-mile stretch between those two poles is the perfect setting for a mugging or worse.
WHAT WE DON'T USE, WE COULD LOSE
The result? A major neighborhood resource goes unused by a significant number of neighborhood people who'd rather go to a greenspace where they feel safe.
If you want to see what happens when a magnificent park goes unused because it's considered dangerous, have a look at High Bridge Park, overlooking the Harlem River Valley in Washington Heights. It was virtually abandoned by the city during an earlier fiscal crisis in the 1970s, then shunned by the community and nearby Yeshiva University--until recently. The painstaking work of reclaiming and recreating what has been lost, vandalized, overgrown and eroded will take decades.
And safety isn't the only issue. Because it offers prospective users only two widely separated points of access and egress, the Ballpark Esplanade as currently configured actively discourages them from using it. Especially for those who live at or near the midpoint of that more-than-half-mile expanse between access/egress points, either entrance can seem very far away.
Richmond Terrace near St. Peters Place,
as seen from the Ballpark Esplanade below.
ROCKET SCIENCE NOT REQUIRED;
ALL WE NEED IS AN OVERPASS
The most obvious solution would be to install an overpass that provides pedestrian access to the esplanade from Richmond Terrace, located at a midpoint between the two entrances already in place.
That midpoint probably lies somewhere between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place. But the available land at that location, as shown right, is too narrow to accommodate the broad ramp or stairway required--similar to two existing ramps on either side of the ballpark, one at Hamilton Avenue, the other at Wall Street.
A better location is Nicholas Street at Richmond Terrace (shown left), where the Esplanade widens considerably and where an overpass could be accommodated more easily.
How to pay for it? Include the cost in the proposal for the North Shore light rail environmental review and preliminary engineering design study (the overpass would be directly above the light rail roadbed) that Rep. Mike McMahon is pushing as part of the federal Surface Transportation bill reauthorization.
