By Steve Scofield
Apparently the folks at Community Board 4 like the idea of protecting the lives and safety of motorists and pedestrians on Queens Boulevard, but cyclists’ lives really don’t matter.
The resolution pushed through by Chair Louis Walker to support the DOT proposal minus the bike lane was a calculated, orchestrated piece of legislative legerdemain. The discussion was about a simple up or down vote—his last-minute revision was never discussed or debated.
As for the bike lane itself—cyclists will use Queens Boulevard whether or not the bike lane is installed, simply because there is no reasonable alternative. Chairman Walker’s suggestion that cyclists use Grand Avenue or Woodside Avenue instead makes no sense—there is no parallel route. Imagine, as a motorist, trying to drive from Forest Hills to Sunnyside if Queens Boulevard didn’t exist. Cyclists are faced with the same dilemma.
If the board members actually wanted to evaluate the proposal on its merits, they only had to venture a few blocks west, to CB2, where DOT has installed the first phase of the redesign. They would see that the redesign, including bike lanes, is working fairly well, without the cyclist-pedestrian mayhem they fear. If they want to venture a little further afield, they can go to Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, which was redesigned several years ago and would be a prototype for the finished product for Queens Boulevard, and yes, it has bike lanes. And, in another part of Brooklyn, pedestrians and cyclists have shared a median in Ocean Parkway successfully since 1897.
Steve Scofield
Astoria
