Activists Call On City To Finish Queens Boulevard Redesign

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Activists flocked to Queens Boulevard for a rally Saturday to demand that city officials finish a long-stalled redesign of the notoriously dangerous roadway.

Led by the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives, street safety activists briefly blocked the Queens Boulevard service road near MacDonald Park to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio's request that the Department of Transportation evaluate an alternative design that would preserve parking slated to disappear under the agency's current plan.

"To say that we're going to consider a watered-down proposal to satiate parking concerns flies in the face of Vision Zero, and we know that that is not courageous," Juan Restrepo, a Queens organizer for Transportation Alternatives, said. "What is courageous is to say that we are going to continue what we have seen works."

City Council Member Karen Koslowitz asked de Blasio to consider the alternative design during a Feb. 19 town hall in Forest Hills, home to the fourth and final stretch of the Queens Boulevard redesign project.

At issue is the fate of 200-some parking spots along the Queens Boulevard service roads, which the Department of Transportation plans to replace with protected bike lanes.

Work on that stretch, which runs from Yellowstone Boulevard to Union Turnpike, is due to resume this summer, but activists worry that de Blasio's intervention will further delay the project.

Activists and local residents take over Queens Blvd to call on @NYCMayor to #finishqueensblvd and not put parking over lives. @CMKoslowitz @TransAlt @NYC_SafeStreets pic.twitter.com/liXHNu12Xt
— Erwin Figueroa (@TransitErwin) February 29, 2020

Phase four of the redesign was supposed to be finished in 2018, but it stalled after Queens Community Board 6 voted against it in a symbolic show of opposition to the parking elimination.

Behind the nearly two-year delay was Koslowitz's parking crusade, Patch revealed in an article last week.

Koslowitz has long been pushing a plan to eliminate the concrete medians between the boulevard's center lanes and service roads and put protected bike lanes there, rather than where the parking lanes are now, but the Department of Transportation insists it isn't possible.

Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg admitted that Koslowit's opposition was a factor in the delay: "I mean, yes, but not just her," Trottenberg told Patch in an interview. "It's a controversial project."