June 15, 2016 By Jackie Strawbridge
The brand new 20th Avenue bike lanes will soon be a little more noticeable.
The Department of Transportation said Tuesday that the agency will put green paint on the new bike path, which stretches from 37th Street to Shore Boulevard and has been clogged with parked cars, as the Astoria Post reported Monday.
However, it has not been determined yet when the paint will be put down because the DOT is waiting for some local utility work to wrap up, a spokesperson said.
The Queens Bike Initiative called for green paint on the bike path after observing several cars parked there over the weekend.
“That’s excellent,” Sergio Pecanha of QBI said when told about the planned paint job. “We’re very happy that they’re acting on this.”
Madeline Garant, who lives on 79th Street and has been using the bike path to commute to the train, said, “I think that the green paint would be a great step in the right direction.”
Garant added that she would also like to see a physical barrier separating out the bike lane, which QBI has requested as well, to prevent cars and trucks from double-parking in the bike path.
A DOT presentation delivered to Community Board 1 in February illustrated the bike path as green but with no physical barriers.
Regarding enforcement, QBI is giving the drivers the benefit of the doubt that they don’t realize they are parking on bike lanes because they are new, so they are calling on the 114 Precinct to tow violators to nearby spots rather than ticketing them.
However, according to Deputy Inspector Peter Fortune of the 114 Precinct, relocating cars is “not something we do and that’s not something we’d be looking to do.”
Instead, he said, “we would issue parking summonses.”
