{"id":78,"date":"2026-06-10T04:15:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2026-06-10T04:15:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:15:20","slug":"mamdani-earmarks-96m-for-new-greenways-as-current-paths-crumble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani Earmarks $96M for New Greenways as Current Paths Crumble"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mayor Mamdani\u2019s executive budget added $95.9 million in new money to build out pedestrian and bike greenways over the next five years \u2014 an infusion welcomed by advocates who nevertheless cautioned that the funds are not enough to fulfill New York\u2019s growing need for car-free paths.<\/p>\n

Read more Tuesday\u2019s Headlines\u2019 Goal Is Better Transit<\/a><\/p>\n

The city routinely takes more than a decade to roll out new greenways, which serve both as recreational spaces and key transportation corridors. When those greenways finally open, however, the city often allows them to slowly deteriorate by delaying or entirely foregoing basic maintenance, such as fixing sinkholes and repairing cracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cProjects that were funded many, many years ago, it takes such a long time to actually implement them,\u201d said Hunter Armstrong, executive director of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. \u201cWe just cut the ribbon on a project a couple of weeks ago that was years in the works,\u201d he added, referring to a project on Sunset Park\u2019s waterfront.<\/p>\n

Significantly, the new money for the Department of Transportation will pay for capital construction<\/em> of greenways, which refers to projects that involve hardened infrastructure \u2014\u00a0not the usual paint and flimsy plastic bollards. The transportation-focused mayor also gave the agency some $200 million over the next four years to quickly build out bus and bike lanes and public realm upgrades as part of the Streets Master Plan.<\/p>\n

Cycle of disrepair<\/h2>\n

Past mayors treated greenways as an\u00a0afterthought\u00a0and let crumbling sections languish, from the country\u2019s first bicycle path on\u00a0Ocean\u00a0Parkway\u00a0to the nation\u2019s busiest one on the\u00a0Hudson River Greenway.<\/p>\n

This cycle of disrepair forces city leaders to spend costly political capital to fund overdue renovations, whose costs rise as conditions worsen over time. During those renovations, the Parks Department and DOT have repeatedly refused to repurpose excess car lanes\u00a0for safe passage, and instead directed cyclists onto\u00a0unsafe detours\u00a0for months on end. New sections of greenway\u00a0still require years to install.<\/p>\n

For example, the city recently wrapped up a stretch of two-way bike paths along one<\/em> mile of Brooklyn\u2019s Third Avenue that took 14 years<\/em> to finish \u2013 as long as it took to construct the Brooklyn Bridge in the 19th century. Another proposal has already broken that record: a two-way raised bike path on three blocks of Commercial Street in Greenpoint will finally break ground sometime in 2028 \u2013 16 years<\/em> after city officials identified the .<\/p>\n

These projects, like a $217-million esplanade stretching for eight blocks along the East Midtown waterfront, carry\u00a0sky-high price tags. \u201cUnfortunately the cost of these projects does add up, so ideally there will be ways to efficiently and wisely spend this money,\u201d said Armstrong.<\/p>\n

The greenway bucks come as a $7.25 million federal grant for greenways is set to run out next year. Under Mayor Eric Adams, the city spent that grant on across the five boroughs but never provided a timeline or funding for the proposals, which included paths along the Bronx\u2019s Harlem River and the western Queens waterfront.<\/p>\n

DOT said the new cash will help turn those proposals into reality. \u201cThis historic investment gives NYC DOT the largest budget in its history, including the biggest-ever funding pool for bus and bike projects,\u201d agency spokesperson Vin Barone told Streetsblog. \u201cThat means more staff and additional capacity to deliver for all New Yorkers for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s executive budget the new funds as \u201cBike Network Development 2030.\u201d The money is dedicated to greenways now, but City Hall spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said the mayor could repurpose it for non-greenway bike lanes that are more immediately, pressing.<\/p>\n

Still, the funding amounts to a small drop in the city\u2019s $124.7 billion annual fiscal spending plan. The NYPD, by contrast, plans to spend nearly the same amount on overtime this summer alone, as Commissioner Jessica Tisch deploy cops on 12-hour shifts to patrol events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup and the celebrations around the United States\u2019s 250th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Capital woes<\/h2>\n

The Parks Department controls the majority of greenways and has its own $674-million pot of money for some longstanding greenway-related projects and spanning to mid-2034, according to agency rep Chris Clark. <\/p>\n

But the agency does not have the staff and resources to realize its projects at a faster pace, according to the city\u2019s greenspace advocates. Amid continuous budget cuts recent years, the agency hemorrhaged dozens of project managers, landscape architects and engineers.<\/p>\n

\u201c[These are] the very people who would be facilitating, if not spearheading, the capital projects that people want to see happen,\u201d said Adam Ganser, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. \u201cThe agency has been somewhat notorious in their ability to do capital projects, but it\u2019s hardly their fault when they don\u2019t have the staffing to do them.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, the East River Esplanade alone has a $358.4 million budget for its renovation, but it has been crumbling into the water for years. \u201cThe funding has been there for a long time, but the project just continues to languish with no leadership or urgency,\u201d Ganser said. \u201cThey\u2019re in a tough spot because they don\u2019t have the resources to push forward the literally hundreds of millions of dollars that have been advocated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Why, Robot: Driverless Taxis Spend As Much Time Without Passengers as Normal Taxis, Study Shows<\/a><\/p>\n

Like other city agencies that perform capital work, Parks must submit new projects to an extensive design, procurement and construction process. This inevitably requires Parks to correspond and collaborate with other entities \u2014 such as DOT, ConEd and National Grid \u2014 whose infrastructural assets overlap with their own.<\/p>\n

But most bureaucratic friction actually arises in the intermediate stage where Parks solicits and chooses third-party contractors to construct projects. This stage is layered with city and state regulations, whose architects originally designed them to prevent city leaders from corruptly favoring their cronies. In practice, these rules slow down routine work, a former senior Parks official argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cProcurement sucks. So much of it is out of the agency\u2019s hands. It\u2019s really hard to reform procurement on a simple agency level,\u201d said Sam Biederman, who was the agency\u2019s chief of staff during the late de Blasio administration and now runs a communications consultancy. \u201cI get the point of not wanting this thing to be corrupt \u2013 I\u2019m from Chicago \u2013 but the effect of all these decades and decades of laws \u2026 is to catastrophically slow down the procurement process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Mayor Eric Adams to improve the capital process, and the new administration should look into reforms, and fund planning staff at Parks to be able to advance projects, according to Ganser. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fixable and it would require both that the agency just decide that this is going to be their top priority\u2026 and then having the mayor and the administration focus on the procurement and capital process citywide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Parks\u2019s greenway repairs heavily rely on the goodwill of local elected officials to allocate their own discretionary funds for projects. In 2019, the agency finally began renovating a mile of the historic Ocean Parkway malls. That project cost more than $4 million over five years, after officials secured funds from then-Council Member Mark Treyger and Eric Adams, who was still Brooklyn\u2019s borough president at the time.<\/p>\n

The agency lacks the budget to maintain its vast portfolio of greenways, playgrounds, pools, boardwalks and miscellaneous greenery in a state of good repair, so officials have relied on lengthy and expensive capital projects rather than routine maintenance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the agency doesn\u2019t have the money to maintain, it almost becomes part of a strategy,\u201d Ganser said. \u201cThe only way they get these things repaired is if they become capital projects. It\u2019s the most expensive way to do this. It doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The circumferential loops of Central Park and Prospect Park offer two vivid counterexamples. These drives are relatively well-maintained because they fall under the jurisdiction of DOT and its robust road resurfacing program \u2014 a legacy of those paths allowing car traffic until 2018, when former mayor Bill de Blasio banned motor vehicles from both.<\/p>\n

Consequently, advocates have repeatedly urged the city to reassign greenway maintenance to DOT. Conversely, some advocates have argued for Parks to take over trimming greenery along DOT\u2019s greenways, a task with which the latter agency has struggled.<\/p>\n

The missing one percent<\/strong><\/h2>\n

On the campaign trail, Mamdani Parks\u2019s budget to one percent of the city\u2019s overall spending plan, but he has allocated only around 0.55 percent, or $685.4 million, in his annual .<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going to take the mayor at his word that he is going to get to one percent in his first term,\u201d said Ganser. \u201cIt\u2019s a difficult budget year. At the same time, the Parks Department budget is a tiny fraction over the overall city budget, so there\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t make significant progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city should select a few projects to show how they can speed up implementation, said Jon Orcutt, a safe streets advocate and former DOT policy director under the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations. \u201cPick a couple of projects already in the pipeline\u2026 and try to make them models for speeding them up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The city should finally link three existing greenways in southern Brooklyn, Ocean Parkway, Shore Parkway, and the Jamaica Bay Greenway, by installing a bikeway on overly-wide Neptune Avenue and the Cropsey Avenue bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s use some of the Mamdani political capital honeymoon period to finally connect these three routes that have sat there with this big gap in the middle since the time of Robert Moses,\u201d Orcutt said.<\/p>\n

Read more Friday Video: Dude, Where Are My Trains?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advocates say the new green will only go so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greenways"],"yoast_head":"\nMamdani Earmarks $96M for New Greenways as Current Paths Crumble - Urban Atlas Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=78\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mamdani Earmarks $96M for New Greenways as Current Paths Crumble - Urban Atlas Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Advocates say the new green will only go so far.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=78\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Atlas Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-10T04:15:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/036f6ba8a22b3d538020592ea1365862\"},\"headline\":\"Mamdani Earmarks $96M for New Greenways as Current Paths Crumble\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-10T04:15:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78\"},\"wordCount\":1618,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Greenways\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbanatlasmedia.com\\\/?p=78\",\"name\":\"Mamdani Earmarks $96M for New Greenways as Current Paths Crumble - 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