The Parks Department will spend millions of dollars to dig up and move more than10 memorials, plaques and sculptures in Battery Park to "gussy up a new bicycle path," according to an article by John Doyle and Chuck Bennett in the April 2, 2011 edition of The New York Post.

The objects that would be moved include "The Sphere", which has stood as a tribute to 9/11 victims, the article said.

"Even as Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe is threatening to raise fees and lay off grounds-keepers, he allocated $4.75 million for the project that relocate the memorials - many unmoved for decades - along an expanded 600-yard Battery Park bikeway and 'monument walk,'" the article said.

The article said that planning documents for the Battery Park & Bikeway Perimeter said that the change "will result in improved, dignified settings for each of the monuments, as well as creating more open, uninterrupted green space."

The monuments that the city plans to move include the 1909 statue of Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Peter Caesar Alberti Market, the Walloons Settlers Memorial, the Salvation Army Memorial, the Netherlands Memorial, the Fort George Memorial, the Battery Cannon, the John Ericsson Statue, the Wireless Operators Memorial and the John Wolfe Ambrose Memorial, according to the article.

The expanded bikeway along Battery Place and State Street is planned to be completed next year and will eventually link the Hudson River Park Bikeway to the East River Esplanade, the article said.

The project is part of the city's controversial push to expand bike lanes around the city under he direction of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, the article said.

A fine article by P. J. O'Rourke in the Saturday edition of The Wall Street Journal noted that "a fibrosis of bicycle lanes is spreading through the cities of the world," adding that "the well-being of innocent motorists is threatened as traffic passageways are choked by the spread of dull whirs, sharp whistles and sanctimonious pedal-pushing."

"Not long ago the only people who braved new York on bicycles were maniacal bike messengers and children heeding an abusive parent's command to "go play in traffic.' Now New York has 670 miles of pike lanes - rather more than it has miles of decently paved streets," the article said

"The transportation commissioner's job is - judging by rush-hour cab and subway rides and last December's blizzard - to prevent the transportation of anybody or anything to anywhere in New York. Bicycles are the perfect way to go nowhere while carrying nothing," the article continued.

"Given that riding a bike in a city is insane and that very few cities need more insane people on their streets, why the profusion of urban bike lanes?" the article asked.

"Bike lanes must be intended," the article noted, "to foster immaturity or New York would have chosen instead to create 670 miles of bridle paths Being on horseback has adult gravitas. Search plazas, parks and city squares the world over and you won't fine a single statue of a national hero riding a bike."

"Soon," the article maintained, "we'll be making room on our city streets for scooter and skateboard lanes, Soapbox-Derby lanes, pogo-stick lanes, lanes for Radio Flyer wagons (actually more practical than bicycles since you can carry a case of beer - if we're still allowed to drink beer), stilt lanes, three-legged-race lanes, lanes for skipping while playing the comb and wax paper, hopscotch lanes and Mother-May-I lanes with Mayor Bloomberg at the top of Lenox Hill shouting to the people on Park Avenue, "Take three baby steps!"