By Carol Tannenhauser
A box truck “struck” and stuck under an historic stone arch bridge over the 65th Street Transverse Road in Central Park on Friday at around 12:49pm, a New York Fire Department (FDNY) spokesperson told WSR.
The New York Police Department (NYPD), Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and Department of Transportation (DOT) were also summoned to the scene.
According to the police report, the “freight liner truck sustained damage to its top.” Neither the police nor fire department noted whether there was damage to the bridge, which was built in 1935.
Police closed the transverse while the FDNY worked to release the truck, “which they did apparently by letting the air out of the truck’s tires, lowering it enough to move it from under the overpass,” according to Upper East Site.
We have queried DOT and OEM, and will update if more details come in.
If only the archway had some big yellow signs alerting drivers to exactly how much clearance they have…
some people just don’t recognize satire when they see it…
These signs are already on the actual bridge. I wonder if there are signs before that. Otherwise if you don’t know the city, how can you know if there are tunnels/bridges there at all? 79st transverse doesn’t have them.
Of course the 79th street transverse has them. How do you think the park drive continues over 79th street? In fact, the 79th st Transverse has FOUR of them.
There are large yellow 9.1 clearance signs on CPW on either side of 65th. I take the crosstown bus through there every morning so I notice these random things. It’s possible the driver was unfamiliar with the city and too distracted to see them. Maybe we could use bigger signs in a different color?
The drivers can’t read the big signs telling you the clearance?
Let the air out of the tires, like they suggest in “Working Girl”
Luckily the boxes on those box trucks are made to be as lightweight as possible and they go CRUNCH! well before they can damage anything as substantial as one of those Central Park overpasses.
I passed the stuck truck before they closed the transverse—not only was it stuck but it was also going the wrong way. The taxi driver and I couldn’t figure out how it got that far west towards oncoming traffic!
Because it is an arch, the highest point is in the middle. Truck drivers will straddle the yellow line if there is a potential that they are too high so that they are going under the arch at its highest point.
https://www.westsiderag.com/2015/03/30/this-truck-driver-ignored-signs-in-central-park-and-had-a-bad-bad-day
It happens! To be fair, the signs are not as loud and prominent as they ought to be to speak to the kind of driver that ends up in this kind of situation.
I didn’t think trucks were allowed in Central Park for this very reason.
The transverse roads are not in Central Park
Boris, It depends upon how you define the word, “in”. They are at street level below the park itself at that point. But there are many places in the interior of the park at street level. These transverse roads were designed to be a specific part of the park by Olmsted and Vaux to allow horse-driven carriages to travel between East and West. And as every New Yorker knows, these transverses were designed to be curved to slow down “hot-rod” carriages trying to race against one another.
There’s an compilation on Youtube of similar incidents at an overpass in the South that, despite bright yellow warnings, has multiple incidents each year. Google 11 foot 8 to find. Mesmerizing.
This might be another case of the driver using cheap car-GPS instead of the expensive commercial GPS which wouldn’t route him that way at all.
Either that or he can’t read numbers.
Either way, I hope the driver gets a *substantial* fine, and if the bridge is damaged, is made to pay for repairs.
Driving a truck is tough, stressful, dangerous and low-paid work.
It is especially difficult in Manhattan.
And we all want our “stuff” ASAP.
We live in a very international city and almost every foreign country uses the metric system. Might I suggest that instead of a sign saying 9′ – 2″ clearance, that the sign should say 9 FEET – 2 INCHES CLEARANCE. And yes, maybe put the clearance in metric as well.
I’m certain that no one would experience a revelation if Feet and Inches were spelled out. Drivers know what to look for on signs if they’re paying attention. Besides, the trend is to eliminate words in favor of internationally recognized symbols. That’s why we don’t have Walk/Don’t Walk signs anymore.
Why is there commercial traffic like this using these transverses in the first place?
“A box truck “struck” and stuck under an historic stone arch bridge over the 65th Street Transverse Road in Central Park on Friday… (NOBODY NOTED) whether there was damage to the bridge, which was built in 1935.”
All around us there’s fabulous civic artwork, like this stone arch bridge, created during the New Deal; “…Transportation-related projects included 78,000 bridges, 26 vehicular traffic tunnels, 800 airports, 650,000 miles of roads, and 24,000 miles of sidewalks and paths. The WPA also left a legacy of 8,003 new or improved parks, and 177,000,000 trees planted in public forests. Through the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal also planted 3 billion trees. Besides the WPA, the Public Works Administration, which was the New Deal agency in charge of funding large-scale projects, spent over 6 billion on 34,500 projects, such as the already mentioned LaGuardia Airport and the Lincoln Tunnel…”
And the only time we give even a glancing notice to any of this beauty is when somebody (POW!) smacks into it.
Just look at the photo of that overpass above, topped with its luxuriant greenery; utilitarian, sturdy, beautiful. No box truck is gonna take it out (at least I hope not), thank you very much.
Some unsung civil servant (civil engineer or Parks Dept. employee, most likely) really thought about the use, affect and beauty of that overpass, which reward all who gaze upon it with the subtle effect of its beauty; and only a single example from the cornucopia of quiet beauties (such as the exquisite lampposts crowning Central Park in the evening like a glowing diadem) that I love about New York City.
So thank you for the photo & story both.