By Gus Saltonstall
Following West Side Rag’s reporting earlier this year on obstacles blocking ambulance accessibility in a stretch of Riverside Park, City Councilmember Gale Brewer sent a letter last week to the New York Fire Department asking for solutions to what Brewer termed a “major problem.”
In comments to the Rag’s March story, readers shared their own experiences of witnessing the difficulties of getting medical help into Riverside Park in emergency cases. Brewer’s May 28 letter to FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker cited one such story that ended with a fatality.
“Recently, an 87-year-old biker suffered a major stroke in Riverside Park on the Serpentine Promenade in the presence of Riverside Park Conservancy staff,” her letter read. Brewer said park staff contacted emergency services, directing them to enter the park at West 91st Street and Riverside Park Drive, “where they were standing by to escort emergency services directly to the individual.” Instead, an EMS unit attempted to enter the park at West 104th Street, which has no park access. “The EMS unit was then parking and driving around outside the Park looking for a way to get inside, instead of following the clear instructions the Conservancy staff had provided,” according to Brewer’s letter. The result was a 30-minute delay, “during which time the individual became unresponsive.”
The case cited by Brewer underscored the park’s lack of signage showing vehicle entrance points. And even with verbal instruction, ambulance drivers have difficulty navigating the park.
In this case, hospital personnel said later that the biker likely would not have survived even if the ambulance arrived sooner, according to Brewer, but she added in the letter that the recent example “is not an isolated incident” and illustrates “a persistent lack of clarity among emergency responders on how to best navigate Riverside Park.”
“We need to find a solution to this ongoing issue with emergency response times being extremely slow in Riverside Park due to geography, access, and communication challenges,” Brewer concluded.
FDNY has not yet responded to Brewer’s letter, and also did not immediately respond to the Rag’s request for comment on Tuesday morning.
Brewer also provided maps created by the Riverside Park Conservancy staff — and shared with local police and emergency services — showing where ambulances can and cannot get into the Upper West Side sections of Riverside Park.
Here is a list of entrance points for vehicles trying to get into the park from 66th to 116th streets, according to the maps.
- 68th Street and Riverside Boulevard (small vehicles only)
- 74th Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 79th Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 83rd Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 84th Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 88th Street and Riverside Drive (small vehicles only)
- 91st Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 96th Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
- 116th Street and Riverside Drive (all vehicles)
Knowing the locations of entrance points is just a start, though. Emergency vehicles also must be aware of how to navigate the different levels of the park.
- Red Flags: Vehicle entrance points to Riverside Park
- Green Lines: Where all vehicles can drive.
- Yellow Lines: Where only small vehicles can drive.
As shown above, an ambulance could enter Riverside Park around West 83rd or 84th streets. But to access the Hudson Greenway area of the park — where many people jog and bike each day — a driver also has to know to travel uptown to around 86th Street, before taking a left and turning back downtown.
The Rag’s reporting in March focused on the bustling area of Riverside Park between West 101st and 111th streets, where there are multiple soccer fields, basketball courts, athletic facilities, and as shown by the list above, no vehicle entrance points from 96th to 116th streets.
The story noted that large stone barriers, placed from around West 103rd to 110th streets on the park’s promenade level, blocked all vehicles. The city’s Parks Department told the Rag the barriers were there to allow for repairs to the 90-year-old promenade.
In the above map provided by the Riverside Park Conservancy, the red line that stretches from West 103rd to 109th streets is labeled as “Not vehicle accessible. Failing infrastructure.”
Since the story was published in early March, the Rag has repeatedly asked the city’s parks and transportation departments, as well as the Riverside Park Conservancy, for more information about repairs to the promenade, and what it means for its conditions between 103rd and 109th streets, if vehicles of any kind had been banned from driving on it, but none has responded.
The Rag will continue to pursue the subject.
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“…park staff contacted emergency services, directing them to enter the park at West 91st Street and Riverside Park Drive, “where they were standing by to escort emergency services directly to the individual.” Instead, an EMS unit attempted to enter the park at West 104th Street, which has no park access.”
Sounds like the problem is that EMS didn’t follow instructions?
Emergency workers don’t always get the information they need when they need it. You always seem to hold emergency workers in contempt.
Not at all – sounds like Gale is not proposing much of anything but seems like the best/easiest/most cost efficient solution to this “major problem” is to fix the communication with the EMS teams.
They’re not trained properly!
Its a sad story that probably has parallels in many other parts of the city undergoing construction or routing changes. If the first responders don’t normally work in that area the chances of them being familiar with local repairs or changes decreases and response time increases. First responder intra and inter-agency communications have also been an identified issue at least since 9-11 if not earlier. There are better ways out there now but cost will be an issue.
Can’t this be solved by an app like Waze for Emergency Responders that shows not only the roads any of us can use but also access routes in all parks?
Yes, but they’re not trained properly how to enter areas and getting to that emergency location of that city park.
The Conservancy has done an excellent job explaining the entrances issue, and the map is as good as it can be. Unfortunately, Riverside Park is a century-old build-out with early-20th century additions, and no one considered vehicle access for emergencies when it was being constructed.
The Parks Department is responsible for directional signage, and they are the ones that need to be pressured to act. Also, some of the signage would have to be on streets outside of the Park proper.
For example, one major vehicle access point is off 96th Street, just before the ramp onto the Henry Hudson. That entry takes a vehicle behind the Dinosaur Playground directly towards the playing fields below the promenade. It’s only apparent to drivers in the know.
And re the promenade concrete barriers: they are there because of the instability of the Overbuild structure over the railroad tracks, not the Promenade itself. The money has supposedly been allocated for a study to repair the Overbuild, but it will be years before anything is actually done. What’s needed, to allow access in emergencies, is a lift-gate system like on railroad crossings. (And it’s shameful that no one has responded to the Rag about this.)
Riverside Park looks to be 2 blocks wide, Couldn’t EMS have stopped at the cross street closest to the victim, grabbed a stretcher, walked a block or 2 there, then conveyed the patient back to the ambulance for triage? This seems like common sense.
This right here is the issue. If what I’m assuming is an UWS side local is not aware of the navigation issue in the park, how would a EMS that has in all likelihood never entered the park.
I feel horrible for the person and his family.
However the park is old and there are ways to access it with the proper signage. The ambulance didn’t follow park personnel directions – but how could they? It is not a direct communication to start with, and the EMS can’t really listen to the 3rd party directions – what if they are wrong?
Updating signage and hospital EMS services should be a straightforward uncomplicated issue. Gale didn’t need to insert herself there to make appearances that she is doing something. She is not.
Considering that Riverside park has been there since the beginning of time, and the access map can be easily updated, what about more recent annoying issue of Open Streets? It has no value, there’s nothing going on and it is there solely due to the city bureaucracy. In this case rerouting should be mapped and distributed each and every time, and not once as in Riverside park case.
And I have to say once again – Open streets bring no value, it is nothing but closed and confusing streets. There’s nothing and nobody there. I have many pictures I took for this particular reason, in case @UWS Dad will again claim that there are lots of people and activities and Open streets are somehow essential to the city.
Wow a truly impressive non sequitur from ambulances in riverside park to Open Streets!
I wouldn’t say Open Streets are ‘essential’ but they sure are a lot more pleasant for residents and local businesses than the usual car traffic.
And that was exactly my point and directly related to the subject which is emergency vehicle accessibility. We are addressing emergency vehicles ancce issue because of a 100-year old park while Open streets that unnecessarily create the same issues are still popping up consistently. Emergency vehicles have to be rerouted – and for what? For a couple of individuals to enjoy a car-free street which has been designed for cars and public and emergency transport to start with? There are 2 parks 2 blocks away! No need to disrupt transportation including emergency vehicles which creates inconvenience for many for the enjoyment of a very few.
Open streets are of course an issue their utilization rate is very much an example of things like the Sudanese civil war. The fact that Gale Brewer has failed to resolved either of this, is a testament to her lack of action.
Directions sometimes get mixed up and or delayed, the message went thru multiple people before it got to EMS. But hey when in doubt say something nasty.
Just goes to show the competence of these drivers and how they don’t know the City Parks on how to maneuver and no one‘s training them….
There is no one training these drivers to drive and know inside of a NYC Park and the logistics. Safely and efficiently maneuver around a NYC park, you’ll want to use a combination of slow speeds, clear signals, and careful observation of your surroundings
of the turns to make to get to the emergency location.
Maybe better GPS system that will automatically drive them to that location where the emergency is built into all cell phones of the person reporting the emergency.
EMS drivers don’t know….‼️They’re so incompetent. They may know a city street with the ridiculous loud sirens, but they sure do not know the city parks of New York City on how to maneuver around them and how to enter a location to get them to the victim. This is nothing new. This has been going on forever with them and the police even the EMS trucks that are “inside” Central Park. Don’t know how to get to a location inside the park. I’ve seen it last year.
Two EMS trucks were going in circles looking for an 86yo old woman having a seizure on a park bench entering W. 81st St. right next to “Winterdale Arch”.
I am sure most of you know the location….(especially us dog walkers)🐾🐾
I’ll give you $100 if you ask EMS truck to go to that location and they actually find their way to it today! They know nothing how to get there!!!!!
They need to be trained!!!!
No one is training inside Park logistics locations to them. It’s shame, and outrageous and unacceptable in today’s world.
Wake up New York City ‼️ The technology is out there to offer this kind of problem resolved.
It’s 2025.!!!!!!
To call every EMS worker incompetent is hardly fair. Driving an emergency vehicle through NYC parks is definitely no walk in the park. There are so many parks it is impossible to expect EMS workers or anyone to know all the parks. Communication is often an issue because it often it a game of telephone where the messages go through several different people and get confused.
This is a solution in search of a problem.
The EMS services have been able to get into riverside park for decades.
It’s NEVER been a problem my five decades on the Upper West Side and I’m in the park 5 times a week at least.
Better editing and story selection, please
Response times in Riverside have always been an issue. I’ve seen an ambulance literally stop in the the parkway to get to someone in one of the soccer fields. There was also the time when the delivery guy cracked his head open on one of the benches and died. While them being there sooner would have changed nothing, they also took a really long time to get there. In more than one occasion I’ve seen them leave the ambulance on Riverside Drive and walk down with the stretcher. Imagine carrying a large person up those hills in a emergency.
Slightly off topic, but one of the maps shown reminds me of a problem I’ve had several times over the years reporting misc incidents.
There are essentially two “Riverside Drives” – the major artery, and the “mini” parallel side street. I’ve yet to have spoken with a 311 or 911 agent who can acknowledge which is which based on the information I’m giving him or her.
Right. The mini street is on the “high” side, i.e. closer to the buildings and above the “islands,” the small planted areas. Seems that it is the responsibility of the person calling/complaining to explain this. Can’t expect 311 or 911 agent, who may well reside in Brooklyn or Queens, to know this.
Now, this is embarrassing. Despite living a couple steps of Riverside Drive (the little one), and crossing both twice a day to walk my dog… I always assumed big one was just plain Riverside and little one had “drive” at the end of it.
lol
The cafe by 70th Street — they get supplies through the 60th(?) Street entrance — like the fire engines used recently — that’s another option. Does anyone know how the person who collapsed around 79th Street last summer made out? Thank God there was a doctor at the ball field who did CPR — and then someone brought an AED — before the EMS people could figure out access to the park. They finally had to run down the hill with a stretcher to take the person to the hospital. I hope that runner didn’t lose any brain/whatever function. The Riverside Park staff could also be enlisted to help out in such situations — although most of the time they have their hands full with putting up with all of us UWSers…..
“Unresponsive” means “dead,” Who’s responsible for training EMS drivers to get through this maze?
Observation : Yesterday(6/3) about 7:30AM while running in the park I observed an EMS ambulance that was clearly lost. It ran its sirens to allow pedestrians to step aside as it slowly moved along pathways.
A thought: The pathway along the river is wide enough for emergency vehicles, but often has obstructions, such as the constuction, now near the 96th clay tennis courts, or the plastic pylons near the boat basin that separates bicyclists from pedestrians. The only access however are near the hippo park, along the pathway under the highway at 84th street, and at 59th street. I believe there was access at 79th street but reconstruction there looks to block it. There is very limited access further north to areas west of the highway such as cherry walk.
Hmm, perhaps if they made their sirens even LOUDER they could blast their way in.
I don’t want to get into the sordid history of FDNY’s takeover of EMS and,,, the related fact that ONE THIRD of “911” medical calls are turfed out to third parties, as WSR’s picture of a Mt. Sinai ambulance demonstrates… (Well, I guess I did bring it up).
In any event, decades ago planners at EMS _did_ draft out numerous key sites and best methods of access.
I’ve reached out, back channel, to the person who’s in charge of this section and hopefully this problem will be addressed.
The lack of information about the geography of the park is also an issue for reporting non-emergencies. I called last summer to report anti-Semitic graffiti near the 105th st dog park. 311 wouldn’t take the report unless I could give them a building number where the graffiti was. I explained that it was in the park and not on a building and they still insisted that without a building number, there was nothing they could do
“The city’s Parks Department told the Rag the barriers were there to allow for repairs to the 90-year-old promenade.”
This is a blatant lie by the Parks Department. The promenade is caving in above the Amtrak tracks beneath. This has been happening for a decade now, there are no repairs being done whatsoever. They place those blocks to prevent cyclists from crashing on the gaps made by the caved in areas, and to prevent vehicles from driving over them as well. But that’s it. There are no repairs being done. So this is now a doubly dangerous situation. Shame on the Parks Department for their inaction in this matter, and frankly Amtrak as well. It’s their rail tunnel.