For These Urban Planning Students, NE Queens Becomes A Classroom

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — A group of Hunter College urban planning students is spending the semester learning how to make pedestrians and cyclists safer, and northeast Queens is their classroom.

The graduate students are developing a vision for improving transportation options in a swath of northeast Queens that includes Bayside, Douglaston and East Flushing. When the semester ends in December, they'll share their findings with the city's transportation department.

Their professor, urban planner Jason Brody, said he chose the area — Queens Community Board 11's district — because residents have a wide range of viewpoints on how the city should tackle transportation issues and street redesigns.

"We think of it, some of us, as a transit desert, but it really has a lot of transit," Brody said in an interview. "There are a lot of opportunities to look for ways that bike infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure can make the communities in CB 11 safer, livable, more resilient, easier to get around for a wide variety of people."

"It's forcing the students to look at bike infrastructure in new contexts," he added.

But the project is less about proposing new bike lanes and more about how urban planners can makes neighborhoods safer and more accessible for everyone. The infrastructure itself is just a means to an end, Brody said.

"We are trying to focus on equity," one of the students, Kerry Goleski, told Patch. "What we're looking for is empowering people who might not have access to a car, including teenagers, students and people who might not be able to afford a car."

The students started their project by surveying residents' views of their transportation network and collecting data on how they get around, Goleski said.

Using that information and the city's crash and traffic data, they've started putting together a more concrete plan to send to officials at the Department of Transportation, who will then decide whether to take the ideas further.

Residents can weigh in on the project by taking this survey or emailing the students at bikestudioproject.huntermup@gmail.com.