Ken Coughlin

The city's ongoing effort to have it both ways in Central Park resulted in another near-tragedy last week.

As I wrote in a post last week, the City of Melbourne, Australia, is working hard to make cycling easier and safer -- but not quickly enough to save the life of one cyclist. The day after my post a 33-year-old Melbourne woman was killed when her wheels slipped on tram tracks on Melbourne's main thoroughfare, Swanston Street, and she fell into the path of an oncoming Gray Line tour bus.

In August, I had the pleasure of spending a little more than two weeks in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is the country's second-largest city, with 3.8 million residents in the metropolitan area. Despite its size, from a walking and transportation standpoint (to say nothing of a coffee-drinking perspective), Melbourne almost defines the term "livable city."

It was on last year's Earth Day that Mayor Bloomberg unveiled his far-reaching plans to make New York City more sustainable, with congestion pricing as one of the centerpieces. For some reason, making Central and Prospect Parks car-free did not make the list of 127 announced initiatives. With congestion pricing off the table for now thanks to some profiles in fecklessness in Albany, the Bloomberg administration has more reason than ever to remedy that oversight.

This holiday season, users of Central and Prospect Parks got an unexpected and welcome gift after years of finding coal (and exhaust) in their stockings. Interestingly, the sources of that exhaust didn't seem to complain (or perhaps even notice) that things had changed.

The Dept. of Transportation's 2005 study showed there is no need to eliminate car-free hours during the holidays. So why did they do it this year?