"We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our parks with the same deference."
--naturalist and author Edward Abbey

Make Prospect Park a green, car-free oasis, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week!

Prospect Park's trees, lawns, paths and ponds offer a refuge from the noise and danger of the city's streets. Unfortunately, when cars are allowed on the drives, the park becomes a dangerous speedway for the convenience of a handful of motorists, and to the detriment of the health and safety of thousands of daily park users. Tens of thousands of Brooklynites have written in support of Transportation Alternatives' campaign to rid the park of the noisy, polluting menace of traffic.

The current situation is dangerous and unfair to thousands of Brooklyn residents who are being cheated out of a safe and healthy place to play and exercise. With 1599 miles of roadway, but only 6.9 square miles of parkland, Brooklyn has the city's lowest percentage of parkland. It is not fair that the city insists on using one of the borough's few green open spaces to speed along noisy, dangerous, exhaust belching private cars.

The outlook for a car-free Prospect Park is brighter than ever. The campaign enjoys the support of four parkside council members and three former DOT commissioners, in addition to tens of thousands of Brooklyn residents. Our goal is simple: Make Prospect Park a green, car-free oasis, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week!

Introducing the Prospect Park Youth Advocate Program

The Prospect Park Youth Advocate Internship Program intends to gather the intelligent, creative and dedicated young people of Brooklyn to make their biggest and best park a healthy, car-free place to be. The summer-long internship will teach four Brooklyn high school students the ins-and-outs of advocacy and community organizing, while guiding them through the brainstorming, planning and enacting a full-scale advocacy campaign for a car-free Prospect Park. We will also be gathering a force of volunteer Youth Advocates to help with organizing and garnering the support of the young people of Brooklyn. Through series of events like the clocking of speeding motorists, DIY air quality and emissions testing, free bicycle tune-ups, and a character day in which the Youth Advocates dress and act in the role of significant park characters (like Fredrick Olmstead, or a Red Tail Hawk), all held together by a postcard campaign addressed at Mayor Bloomberg, we hope to convince our elected officials that the users of Prospect Park, and especially the young people who love this patch of green, would be better off without car traffic nearby.