By Phil Corso
It should not be a bumpy ride for long.
A milling and resurfacing project on Northern Boulevard between Bayside and Douglaston is expected to see a quick turnaround, Community Board 11 said.
“It is a standard milling and repaving job,” said Susan Seinfeld, the CB 11 district manager. “They will be doing the work mostly at night because of all the activity on Northern Boulevard.”
The long-awaited repaving of the patchy strip of road from 223rst Street to Douglaston Parkway started late last week and should be finished within six weeks, Seinfeld said. Because the work is on such a busy piece of road connecting Bayside to Douglaston and Little Neck, Seinfeld said the city Department of Transportation would be working at night to expedite the project.
“It needs it so badly,” Seinfeld said. “It really is terrible.”
The top layer of the stretch of road near the Alley Pond Environmental Center was ripped away last week in a quick milling process, making way for a rapid resurfacing. A DOT spokesman said workers should begin resurfacing the road by the end of this week to minimize the amount of time northeast Queens drivers will be subject to the uncomfortable bumps of a road undergoing milling.
“The milling process is noisy and may cause discomfort in the affected neighborhood for several days,” the DOT said on its website. “Although the DOT takes steps to minimize the inconvenience, milling requires trucks, special machinery and portable lights. To minimize disruption, machinery is fitted with noise reduction equipment and crews attempt to keep noise to a minimum.”
Seinfeld said typical DOT milling projects do not complete roads repaving until weeks later, but because of the heavy traffic volume on Northern Boulevard, area drivers should not have to suffer for an extended period.
“They can’t let these kinds of projects go for too long because riding over the milling is terrible,” Seinfeld said. “It is such a busy road. They should not be working on it for that long.”
The DOT already repaved stretches of road on Northern Boulevard in 2011 closer to Bell Boulevard, but did not go much further because of a large sewer project at the nearby Alley Creek, Seinfeld said. The current roadwork, she said, is the DOT’s effort to finish the job.
CB 11 Chairman Jerry Iannece said the road desperately needed the servicing as it was filled with potholes because of the high volume of traffic throughout the day. Iannece has been a vocal advocate of Northern Boulevard’s repaving and asked the DOT to complete the work last year.
Reach reporter Phil Corso by e-mail at pcorso@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
