Maspeth Residents To Take Truck Gripes To Streets
Fed up with the amount of large trucks illegally using Grand and Flushing avenues to travel through Maspeth, local residents plan to protest at a key neighborhood section next Thursday morning, June 20, in calling for greater enforcement and penalties against truckers who break the law.
Organized by the Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together (COMET) civic association, the rally will take place rain or shine from 8 to 10 a.m. next Thursday at the corner of Grand Avenue, Flushing Avenue and 64th Street.
In an email sent to the Times Newsweekly last Thursday, June 6, COMET President Rosemarie Daraio stated that the protest is being held in response to the large number of “huge tractor-trailers [which] continue to use Grand and Flushing avenues to avoid traffic on the LIE” (Long Island Expressway).
Grand and Flushing avenues between the Brooklyn/Queens border and the expressway were designated as local truck routes in 2011 after the Maspeth truck bypass-a route for in the industrial portion of the neighborhood created for trucks traveling through the area between Brooklyn and the LIE-was implemented.
As local truck routes, only rigs making “local deliveries” in Queens are permitted to use Grand and Flushing avenues. Since the definition does not limit truck traffic to vehicles making stops in Maspeth, Daraio noted, summonses for truck drivers traveling off route on these roadways have been thrown out in court.
“The judges state that it is not clear,” Daraio, in referring to the term “local deliveries only,” told the Times Newsweekly in a phone interview on Monday, June 10.
In her email last Thursday, Daraio outlined the four goals of COMET’s protest, the first of which calls on administrative law judges in traffic court to uphold summonses issued to truck drivers by local police for “violating the regulations with regard to through truck routes and local truck routes.”
Protestors will also call upon the city Department of Transportation (DOT) to update its truck route map to include the Maspeth Truck Bypass as a designated through truck route. The state Transportation Department will also be urged to increase its enforcement efforts in Maspeth and install greater signage directing trucks traveling through Maspeth to use the bypass rather than Grand and Flushing avenues.
Finally, COMET will press the Police Department “to conduct fullscale motor carrier truck enforcement” in Maspeth “on a regular basis, not sporadically,” Daraio said. The increased enforcement is needed due to “the high volume of overweight and oversized trucks that come through the location.”
The Times Newsweekly learned on Wednesday morning, June 12, that the NYPD conducted an enforcement operation at the corner of Grand Avenue and Remsen Place, close to the location of next Thursday’s rally.
Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, told this newspaper that a number of rigs were issued summonses by police officers for various traffic and safety violations. One dump truck, he noted, had to be towed after officers found two rear wheels to be in an unsafe condition.
Due to the large number of trucks continuing to use Grand and Flushing avenues to travel through Maspeth, Holden stated the JPCA will seek action by the DOT to have both roadways taken off the truck route network completely. At a meeting of Community Board 5’s Transportation and Public Transit Committees last November, DOT officials stated they would move to pull truck route status from Grand and Flushing avenues in 2013, based on the performance of the Maspeth Bypass.
Daraio added that the NYPD must provide the 104th Precinct with officers trained to conduct truck enforcement inspections in order to conduct regular operations such as what took place Wednesday morning.
“The good news is that the bypass is in place. The bad news is that it needs some tweaking,” Daraio told this paper on Monday. “We urge anyone that has a problem with truck traffic to come out” to next Thursday’s protest, adding that “the whole community is affected by this.”
For more information on the June 20 protest, visit COMET’s website, www.cometcivic.com.
