Put the Put in the Bronx greenway

It was a glorious spring day on the High Bridge yesterday as Mayor Adams pedaled up the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail through Manhattan’s Highbridge Park and out on the ancient span celebrating its 175th birthday high above the Harlem River. He stopped halfway to the Bronx to announce plans for an enhanced greenway along the Bronx shore of the river, running seven miles from Van Cortlandt Park south to Randalls Island.

Having being the earliest to promote the refurbishment and reuse of the High Line and the High Bridge and the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail during the Giuliani years and having fought long and hard for their completion going back decades, excuse us for taking a parochial view of what the top part of the Bronx’s Harlem River Greenway should be and should not be.

Leaving Van Cortlandt Park, the shared bike and pedestrian path should use the entire length of the old Putnam Line, a commuter rail route that last carried passengers in 1958. The Put’s irreplaceable right of way runs just to the west of the Major Deegan. In Westchester, the Put is part of the North-South County Trailway. In the Bronx, it would be ideal for the greenway connecting to the Harlem River.

One version of the plan, however, only has the new greenway on a limited stretch of the Put, from Van Cortlandt to 230th St. and then forcing the greenway off the Put onto local streets because the MTA claims it needs the five blocks to 225th St. for something. Stop that train. Whether it’s to turn trains or pack up suburban commuters’ garbage from Grand Central, Gov. Hochul should persuasively convince the MTA to make way for the walkers and bicyclists of the Bronx.

South of 225th St. and the big Target store, the greenway must cross over Metro-North’s tracks and resume on land between the rails and the Harlem River, connecting to an existing greenway coming north from Roberto Clemente State Park and running to the High Bridge. It’s a straight shot that starts with the Put.