It’s a Deal: Help for Park Ave. Pedestrians

It has been an oddity of the New York City streetscape for decades — for 10 blocks along Park Avenue north of Grand Central, there are no Walk/Don’t Walk signs.

Their absence has puzzled people trying to cross the avenue. Some have blamed Park Avenue residents’ “hoity-toity” taste, and others have suggested it has something to do with the frequent limousine traffic along the avenue.

Actually, the cause is a long-running feud between the city and Metro-North Railroad. And finally, the two agencies say, they have stopped fighting and come up with a solution.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner.

The deal will be submitted for approval next week to the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees Metro-North.

For as long as anyone under a certain age can remember, vehicle traffic on Park Avenue from 46th Street to 56th Street has been controlled by a set of stoplights on a pole at each intersection. In that same strip, there are no signals for pedestrians, and the absence has contributed to a high rate of pedestrian accidents in the area, officials say.

The reason for the unusual configuration is that the avenue was built on a deck over the tracks that carry trains to and from Grand Central Terminal. The deck varies from about 18 to 24 inches thick, which is not deep enough to provide a foundation for traffic signal poles without breaking through the ceiling of the rail tunnel. Metro-North officials opposed any solution that would affect the tunnel ceiling.

“It was a jurisdictional issue,” said Sam Schwartz, who worked at the Transportation Department from 1982 to 1990. “We would have been puncturing the ceiling of the railroad. That’s where the battle ensued.”

Mr. Schwartz, who now runs a consulting firm, recalled raising the issue back in 1982 with Conrail, which controlled the tracks before Metro-North was created the following year.

“In dealing with railroads in those days it was like dealing with an alien from another planet,” Mr. Schwartz said. “The bureaucracies spoke completely different languages. The railroads thought they received some kind of right to do whatever they wanted to do when Adam left Eden, that it was somehow divinely given to them.”

Elliot G. Sander, the executive director of the transportation authority, was already aware of the dispute when he joined the authority early this year. He had tried to tackle it from the other side during the mid-1990s when he held Ms. Sadik-Khan’s position as the transportation commissioner.

“When I was at city D.O.T., my understanding was that it was the M.T.A. that was responsible for the impasse,” Mr. Sander said. In his new job, he said, staff members told him the city was to blame.

Ms. Sadik-Khan said the deal called for work at all 11 intersections. Each one will get 12 Walk/Don’t Walk signs and at least 8 traffic signals. Metro-North will design a method to anchor them in the deck and tunnel ceiling.

The cost of installing all the signals is $5.7 million. The work will take place as part of a larger renovation of the streets and sidewalks around Grand Central, intended to stop rainwater and snowmelt from leaking onto Metro-North’s tracks and into the terminal. The entire project is expected to cost $35 million, to be shared by the city and Metro-North.

“Our primary concern is leaks,” said Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for Metro-North. “Their primary concern is street lights. We’re working together to take care of both of them.”

Ms. Sadik-Khan said the stretch of Park Avenue covered by the agreement has a relatively high rate of accidents, many of them involving pedestrians. Installing new traffic signals in combination with the Walk/Don’t Walk signs will make it safer, she said.

A contractor for the traffic signal work will be hired by next September, officials said. Metro-North said that because the project had not yet been designed, it was too early to predict when all the signals would be in place.

Over the years, New Yorkers have guessed at possible reasons for the missing signs.

“I thought it was an aesthetic thing,” said Anthony Boccarifus, 40, a lawyer. “I thought it was the whole way up Park Avenue, some hoity-toity thing.”

“I hate it,” said Graham Nelle, 33, a lawyer who recently began working in an office on Park Avenue. He said it was unsafe and frustrating because pedestrians cannot see the traffic signal in the median once they get halfway across the avenue.

Jeffrey Davis, 32, a lawyer who works on Park Avenue and takes his lunch breaks there, said he was pleased that pedestrian lights were finally being installed.

“I think I will look forward to the hand and the man,” Mr. Davis said. “It’s everywhere else, and this area is so trafficked and so populated that it makes sense.”