By Bill Parry
Motorists in Astoria will have to slow down later this summer when the Department of Transportation begins construction of the neighborhood’s first Slow Zone.
Community Board 1 approved the plan last week that will implement a 20-mile-per-hour speed limit on streets between Astoria Boulevard and 30th Avenue, from 21st Street to Steinway Street.
A DOT spokesman said the Slow Zone includes 14 proposed speed bumps and 21 proposed gateways in an area that includes three schools, a senior center, and several daycare and pre-K programs.
“Many of these streets feed into Astoria Boulevard, the Triborough/Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, and the Grand Central Parkway, and as a consequence, cars will often speed down these quiet residential blocks,” City Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Astoria) told CB1.
In addition, the DOT has begun installing concrete barriers along a 2.1-mile stretch of Vernon Boulevard from Astoria to Long Island City. The so-called Jersey barriers will protect bicyclists and pedestrians from vehicular traffic along a bike path that is growing in popularity along the waterfront. The DOT is developing a mural project for the fall, which will help make the path more inviting with an art design on the barriers.
Meanwhile, Scott Gastel, assistant DOT commissioner and the press secretary, is refuting comments made during City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer’s June 12 rally that called on the DOT to restore 190 public parking permits that were withdrawn from the Court Square neighborhood by the agency.
“DOT seeks a fair and efficient balance between daily and monthly permits, with the recent addition of first come-first served spaces for motorists in its municipal lots,” Gastel said in a statement. “Our previous renewal system at Court Square allowed previously permitted motorists to renew their monthly permits at 330 spaces. Routinely this facility was forced to turn away a significant amount of motorists seeking parking on a more short-term basis.”
Gastel added that after hearing from local stakeholders the agency made 210 monthly spaces available on a first-come, first-served basis.
“The 120 spaces that were previously reserved for monthly spaces are now being utilized for short-term parking. No spaces are being lost with this change in policy,” Gastel said.
He also denied the DOT was using public parking spaces to house agency vehicles and material. He said a contingent of the agency’s operational fleet was parked at the Court Square Municipal Parking Garage because they contain valuable equipment in spaces that are “not part of the 330 spaces made available to the public at this lot.”
Van Bramer stood by his comments saying, “The removal of parking in Long Island City’s Court Square Municipal Parking Garage is a significant loss in a neighborhood which already suffers from a lack of available street spaces for local residents. As I stated before, what has been done can be undone. DOT has an opportunity here to once and for all restore these much-needed spaces to the hardworking tax payers and families of Long Island City.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
