The new year is the time when many people welcome the future with good intentions, but making resolutions taxes our moral fiber because they are easily broken.
Here at TimesLedger Newspapers, we’d like to take the easy way out and produce a wish list of what we hope for in 2014. Then we can sit back and let the movers and shakers take the fall for not fulfilling our dreams.
As we compiled the list, a pattern began to emerge. In Queens, the forgotten borough in terms of public transportation, most of the recommendations involved routine travel by car, bus, subway, railroad and boat:
1. The city Department of Transportation should build a multilevel parking garage in Bayside on the site of the smaller municipal lot on 41st Avenue to accommodate visitors to Bell Boulevard eateries and bars as well as Long Island Rail Road commuters.
2. The Rockaway ferry from the peninsula to Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan should be made permanent with runs five days a week at an affordable fare.
3. Work on the No. 7 subway line signal system should be sped up and weekend shutdowns should be suspended during major festivals such as the Lunar New Year in Flushing.
4. Overpasses should be built over Queens Boulevard on at least two heavily trafficked spots to protect pedestrians from being struck. School crossing guards should be posted at back entrances to schools on the infamous thoroughfare.
5. Add more Select Bus routes to improve service between Jamaica and points in northeast Queens, where trips can average as much as an hour. Fast forward BRT bus proposals for south-to-north travel.
6. The DOT should enforce radar-enforced speed limits on Northern Boulevard, the site of several pedestrian fatalities in 2013.
7. Accelerate plans to build a new LIRR station in Flushing to replace the eyesore in the community that is friendlier to blowing trash than to riders who must climb two flights of stairs to get to the platforms.
8. Return a newsstand to the Woodside LIRR-7 station, which no longer has a place to buy a hot cup of coffee or a newspaper while waiting for the next train.
9. Redesign the off-ramp of the outer roadway from the Queensboro Bridge for the safety of drivers and pedestrians after several deadly accidents.
10. Change the entrance to the Jackie Robinson from the Grand Central Parkway, where the line of cars must come to a full halt at a stop sign.
