By Joe Anuta
Community Board 6 voted to approve a list of recommendations last week to a city plan to alleviate congestion along Woodhaven Boulevard, an important artery that runs north to south through the borough.
The board Aug. 3 largely agreed with the city Department of Transportation’s preliminary plans, which would seek to change traffic patterns and in some cases lane designations in order to ensure traffic flows more smoothly from the Long Island Expressway all the way down to Rockaway Boulevard.
“I believe that Woodhaven Boulevard has become, through the years, another main artery for traffic to the airport or to the Rockaways,” said Frank Gulluscio, district manager for the board. “It’s become an extension of the Van Wyck Expressway.”
The council unanimously voted in favor of a list of recommendations, which included approval for the DOT’s ideas on how to alleviate the bottleneck at Elliot Avenue, the first obstacle to anyone traveling southbound on the road after exiting the LIE, while increasing pedestrian safety.
The DOT proposed expanding traffic islands to grant pedestrians repose when crossing the busy thoroughfare and higher visibility sidewalks to alert drivers.
But there was one catch.
The resolution stated that the expansion of the traffic islands should not further impede traffic, and the board urged the DOT not to sacrifice a northbound lane of Woodhaven Boulevard for the island.
The board also took issue with the DOT’s plan to eliminate a left-turn lane from southbound Woodhaven Boulevard at Union Turnpike.
The issue has come up in several prior board meetings, and in the resolution members of CB 6 said they were still opposed to the idea.
“We emphatically believe that the ‘left-turn ban’ will not provide an acceptable remedy. For these reasons we hope the proposal to do this advances no further,” the resolution said.
The board has said in previous meetings that the restriction on turning onto Union Turnpike would push more traffic onto an already clogged Metropolitan Avenue instead, creating another problem.
The board will have plenty of time to voice its opposition to that particular portion of the proposal, since the proposal is still in the preliminary stages and the debate about specific intersections will not occur until 2012.
“We want to continue to work with the DOT and the community regarding Metropolitan Avenue and Union Turnpike,” Gulluscio said. “But we’re not going to look at it until 2012.”
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
