By Bob Harris
73rd Avenue a bone of contention for Fresh Meadows
Last year, the city Department of Transportation came to Community Board 8 and said that the traffic on 73rd Avenue was too fast and should be slowed. The CB 8 Transportation Committee met with DOT Queens Commissioner Maura McCarthy in December to hear proposals for calming traffic on 73rd Avenue from 164th Street to Francis Lewis Boulevard.
The Fresh Meadows Homeowners Civic Association and the Civic Association of Utopia Estates have been proposing for years to have a traffic light placed on 73rd Avenue and 179th Street. Last year, a driver was killed on 73rd Avenue near 179th Street when another driver ran a stop sign. There is also a triangular park between 179th Street and Utopia Parkway at Jewel Avenue.
The DOT keeps saying that the criteria for a traffic light have not been met and keeps refusing to place one at 179th Street. This past February, McCarthy gave a presentation at the Utopia Jewish Center with members of the Fresh Meadows Homeowners Civic, Civic Association of Utopia Estates, Flushing Heights Civic and West Cunningham Park Civic Association present.
Several hundred people attended to criticize many of the proposals and offer their suggestions for 73rd Avenue. Many did not want anything done except for a traffic light put up on 179th Street. McCarthy listened and promised to come back with solutions.
Solutions suddenly happened during the summer.
The DOT milled and repaved 73rd Avenue east from Utopia Parkway to 199th Street, which was needed. Lines and an island were then painted on 73rd Avenue.
Listening to the Fresh Meadows community, the DOT left parking on both sides of 73rd Avenue, a real necessity. It left the bike lanes, but painted a center median about 18 inches wide where there had only been two yellow lines.
There is also a center median west to Utopia Parkway. The bike lanes look a little wider than those west of Utopia Parkway. The driving lane is narrower, a problem because buses travel on 73rd Avenue west from 88th Street. Following a bus the other day, I noticed it seemed to just fit into the corridor provided for it. Sometimes its wheels were in the bicycle lane.
Elaine Young, the West Cunningham Park Civic Association first vice president, called McCarthy when she saw the street being milled and was told the DOT was only going to paint a center island where 73rd Avenue is wider.
She is unhappy that now if a car is waiting to make a left turn on 73rd Avenue and stays off the center median, cars or buses cannot go around it — as had been possible previously — and traffic will have to back up and wait.
The DOT will start a traffic survey to determine if 179th Street needs a traffic light. Listening to CB 8, it will not start the survey until September, when people come back from vacation, children start school and people use the triangle park again on weekends.
The DOT wants to do something about Jewel Avenue, which curves to the west from the southern part of 179th Street just north of 73rd Avenue next to that triangular park. They had sent a postcard survey to residents in this area, asking if they wanted a dead end or narrowing of the street.
Twenty-six had responded, with 58 percent wanting Jewel Avenue to dead end where it reaches Utopia Parkway. The DOT will now do this.
I wonder if these changes are necessary? Will things get better? Will a traffic light ever be put up at 179th Street? A light will slow traffic and make the neighborhood slower, except for the commuters using 73rd Avenue as an alternative to the Long Island Expressway or Grand Central Parkway and who want to go fast.
On Aug. 27, I received an e-mail message saying that the DOT would start working on that Jewel Avenue dead end near Utopia Parkway Aug. 28. It should be done by now.
GOOD AND BAD NEWS OF THE WEEK: A week ago, a hit-and-run driver struck traffic enforcement agent Donnette Sanz as she was going to lunch in the Bronx and threw her under a school bus, which ran over her. The good part was that about two dozen bystanders ran and picked up the 10,000 pound school bus so she could be removed from under it.
Imagine: A group of strangers picked up a bus to free a traffic enforcement agent. In short, people helped someone in need. Sadly, the pregnant Sanz died, as did her son, Sean Michael Justin, who was delivered after the accident, but the good which two dozen people did for her is a lasting memorial.
