When I was growing up on Ocean Ave across the street, it was 3 lanes of traffic. There was no bike lane or anything. On an occasional Sunday they would close it, except to access the big parking lot for the skating rink. The parking lot is now where the big rink is and they restored the concert grove where the old rink was. It was a tragedy there that finally closed the parking lot when someone was killed on a bike by a car entering the lot. It was maybe 5 years ago that they closed the park to traffic for good. Even when I was commuting it was still one lane open for cars in the morning towards Grand Army, and then the other way in the evening. By then though there were few cars and it was clear it was unnecessary to allow them at all. All the predictions of traffic gridlock if they closed the park were proven false, people only used it because it was open, when they closed it the traffic disappeared from the neighborhood. Just like with the 14th St busway for the L train closure, where all the gridlock predictions ended up being nonsense.