Please sign the petition against MORE Queens traffic

From time to time, City government tries to pull a fast one – Quietly approving a major project while keeping its anticipated harmful side effects under wraps. The public only finds out after it's too late, then regrets not having paid attention sooner.

If City planners get their way, it's about to happen again. The City is quietly attempting to proceed with its ill-conceived plan to construct additional Van Wyck access ramps and a huge $4 billion development project right at the intersection of our most popular roadways. If this plan is implemented, Queens residents and commuters will suffer extraordinary traffic congestion.

Incredibly, all experts – including City planners – agree that the ramps-and-development scheme will cause extraordinary traffic congestion in Queens. Even the City's own traffic study admits and quantifies it.

In addition to creating intolerable traffic, the plan also includes a dangerous, new left-lane exit, which is apparently the only way to shoehorn one of the ramps into the existing Van Wyck Expressway/Whitestone Expressway crossover.

And yet, despite knowing that severe traffic congestion will certainly result, City planners still insist on implementing their grand ramps-and-development scheme in Queens. These same planners are also trying to create the impression that this is all a done deal, and that we can't do anything to stop it.

But fortunately for New Yorkers, this disastrous plan can never proceed without the approvals of both the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). However, despite causing severe local traffic delays, the City still expects NYSDOT and FHWA to approve the additional ramps, because the agencies use a very broad "analysis framework" that actually minimizes consideration of the ramps' devastating effects upon local residents, communities and commuters.

Therefore, we must insist that NYSDOT and FHWA give appropriate weight to the severe unmitigable traffic that is certain to result from the proposed ramps and development, and dis-approve these ramps on that basis. We must take immediate action, both to inform the final decision-making authorities of our objections, and to hold those authorities accountable. Nothing less than our quality of life is at stake.

Please register your objections to more Van Wyck ramps, associated development, and severe traffic impacts on Queens roadways by completing the Petition form at www.trafficnightmare.org