Activists Form 'Human-Protected Bike Lane' In Sunnyside

SUNNYSIDE, QUEENS -- Advocates calling for more protection between Queens bike lanes and the traffic whizzing by them made their point with a human chain along the Sunnyside road where a cyclist was killed last year.

Dozens of New Yorkers showed up to Queens' first-ever "human-protected bike lane" event on Wednesday evening along 43rd Avenue, organizers said. The human barricade formed between the road's car and bike lanes aims to demonstrate the dangers of combining the two.

The stunt was part of Transportation Alternative's push for the city to install protected bike lanes along both 43rd and Skillman avenues, which together offer cyclists a direct path between the Queensborough Bridge and Queens Boulevard.

"There are so many instances and so many statistics that have shown protected bike lanes reduce crashes," Juan Restrepo, the group's Queens Organizer, told Patch. "This is a way of bringing back that discussion about protected bike lanes in Sunnyside in a positive way."

Restrepo considers the discussion especially important in Queens, whose streets he called "notoriously dangerous" for cyclists.

"Many of the bike lanes in Queens are a result of (pedestrians) dying on these streets," he said.

This particular push stems from the April 2017 death of Gelacio Reyes. The then-32-year-old Queens man was killed by an alleged drunk driver while biking home from work on 43rd Avenue. Transportation alternatives pointed out that a week later, Queens cyclist David Nuñez met a similar fate on the same stretch of road when he was mowed down by a turning truck.

Bicycling activists contend those lives, and Aaron Padwee's - the cyclist hit and killed in Long Island City when a driver door opened in his path - could have been spared by protected lanes.

A ghost bike in memory now sits in memory of Reyes at 3809 43rd Avenue in Sunnyside, where activists met for the human-protected bike lane event at around 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, organizers said.

They documented their efforts on social media under the hashtag, #SaferSkillman.

The event was the first of its kind in Queens, but Restrepo said human-protected bike lanes have been done before - twice in midtown and numerous times in cities across the world such as Boston, Seattle and Dublin.

"I think a lot of people have shown interest," he said. "They legitimately want to come to something like this because it is historic for Queens."

(Lead photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)