Willets Point traffic clusterfuck coming

From the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

We have had the opportunity to review the city's traffic study on the Willets Point development-and the able rebuttal from Bernard Adler. If the surrounding communities-not to mention the city's tax payers-knew the real story on what kind of traffic mess this development will create, all hell would break loose. Put simply, there is virtually no way to mitigate the expected traffic flood that the additional 1,000,000 square feet of development will generate.

What we do know-and know for certain, since it is in the city's own EIS-is that at least twenty intersections in and around the proposed WP development will be at "F" level of service; meaning severe delays with all of the attendant air pollution and environmental damage. And this unmitigated mess isn't even on the days when there's a Met game or a tennis match!

As usual, the city's idea of mitigation is a traffic signal here, and a new parking restriction there-a wholly inadequate response to the more than 6,000 new car trips that the development will generate. In addition, the city's EIS completely ignores the impact that the newly generated traffic-not to mention the problems that off ramps will create-will have on the Van Wyck and Grand Central.

So what we have is an environmental scam on the citizens of Flushing, Corona and Jackson Heights-the communities in the line of fire from the after shocks of the Willets Point project; and the entire borough of Queens, for that matter. It will be a traffic and environmental nightmare foisted on these communities by the very same Kermit the Mayor who has been ridiculously posturing as an environmental activist. But traffic-free roadways are apparently only desirable in the limousine alleys of Manhattan-and the shlubs in the local nabes can just go choke on Bloomberg's development fumes.

All of these issues will be hammered out in court, but our friends at the Queens Civic Congress should be aware of what lies ahead if WPU fails in its legal battle. It is their members that will bear the brunt of an ill conceived over developmet that fails in its basic planning requirement to insure that local communities are not made to pay an inordinate price for this so-called progress.