The WCPC emphasized that public parks brought more benefits than simply public health and welfare. The WCPC annual reports provided statistics demonstrating that public parks created wealth. In 1921, prior to the creation of the park system, Westchester County’s assessed valuation of taxable property was approximately $675 million. In seven years, the sum had increased to over $1.3 billion. By 1929, the total assessed value of taxable property was $1.5 billion.(277) A cartoon in the Mamaroneck Times illustrated the success of the Westchester County park system. A smiling farmer, representing the park commission, had his annual report in a basket. Smiling at him was a well-dressed man, "Westchester," who holds the farmer’s produce: "prestige," "parkways," and "realty values." "Westchester" told the farmer, "You made me what I am today."(278)

Problems

The Bronx River Parkway was not designed to serve as a major traffic artery. Most of the reservation was devoted to diverse park uses and the main roadway was intended to serve as a pleasure drive linking the city with its parks in the country. The parkway was intended for recreational motorists traveling at 25 miles per hour in the Bronx and 30 miles per hour in Westchester County. By the time it opened in 1925, the BPC could already see that this would be the parkway’s greatest problem: the celebrated driveway was outmoded before it was even completed. In its final report, the BPC acknowledged that there was already criticism that the parkway was too small and that the drive was too narrow. The commissioners reminded the public that they had originally called for a wider parkway, but that funding limitations had forced them to scale back their plans and settle on a 40'-wide drive.(279)

Assessing the parkway’s performance in the mid 1930s, Clarke added that advances in automobile design and the increased use of cars helped make the BRPR drive even more obsolete, at least from a traffic engineering perspective. He explained that increased traffic as well as higher automobile speeds rendered the drive’s basic design inadequate. The 40'-wide road had no shoulders for disabled cars, low clearances at the bridges, and sharp curves that were insufficiently banked. He noted that in Garth Woods and Butler Woods, the divided one-way roads were widely separated and ideally designed for modern traffic.(280) Unfortunately, this was not the case for the rest of the parkway drive. Pedestrians, of course, still traveled at the same speed and continued to find the parkway accommodating, as did other non-motorized recreationalists.

Numerous newspaper articles reported the public’s complaints about the drive. Some of the most serious problems resulted from intersections that the BPC had not provided with grade separations during the initial construction period. The commissioners had recognized the desirability of creating a fully grade-separated motorway, but financial limitations had forced them to focus on the most dangerous intersections at the time the parkway was built. Although the BPC built grade separations in locations where busy traffic warranted the structures, problems quickly became apparent at DeWitt and Desmond Avenues, where vehicle and pedestrian accidents occurred with shocking regularity. The DeWitt intersection was deemed a "death trap." The WCPC considered the crossing so dangerous that it refused to station a policeman at the intersection to direct traffic for fear that he might be killed. A pedestrian-operated traffic light was finally installed at the intersection after a pedestrian was killed in 1930. The light seemed to be a success; most of the pedestrians used the control and motorists obeyed the light. A new annoyance surfaced when the neighborhood children began to use the traffic control light as a plaything.(281)


 

(277)Westchester County Park Commission, Report, 1924, 39; WCPC, Report, 1928, n.p.; WCPC, Report, 1929, 37.
(278)"You Made Me What I Am Today," Cartoon, Mamaroneck Times, June 8, 1931.
(279)Bronx Parkway Commission, Final Report, 1925, 9-10.
(280)Gilmore Clarke, "The Parkway Idea," 39.
(281)"Dangerous Parkway Crossings," Bronxville Press, April 6, 1928; "A Remedy Is Found," White Plains Daily Reporter, May 5, 1930; "Dr. A. O. Squire Holds Driver Negligent In Tully Death Case," Yonkers Herald, March 12, 1930; "Try New Traffic Control Light On County Parkway," Mamaroneck Times, May 24, 1930; "Now Let’s Cooperate," Bronxville Press, May 27, 1930.

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