Bayside Community Board Votes For Utopia Parkway Safety Study

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Queens Community Board 11 is officially backing safe-streets advocates' push to get the NYC Department of Transportation to study redesigning Utopia Parkway.

Members of the Northeast Queens community board voted unanimously Monday night in favor of requesting a "complete street" study of Utopia Parkway from 26th Avenue to the Horace Harding Expressway.

A study is the first step in redesigning the north-to-south corridor to make it safer for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, according to advocates.

"To my knowledge, Utopia Parkway has not been redesigned in decades, since it was first conceived of as a vehicular road,” said Victor Dadras, who chairs the board's transportation committee. “I would like our community board to advocate for this because I’d like us to be at the forefront of this effort.”

Utopia Parkway sees dozens of crashes each year, data shows. Two people have been killed on the parkway since 2018, although both crashes happened north of 26th Avenue, where the study would begin.

Community board member Ben Turner, who led a presentation Monday on the proposal, said a redesign would make Utopia Parkway "more inclusive of all road users."

The issue is personal for Turner, who said he was hit by a driver while biking to his job at St. John's University in 2017.

The Eastern Queens Greenway, an initiative to create safe transportation connections between the region's parks, and the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives have also spearheaded the campaign to improve Utopia Parkway.