The city shuttered the decrepit Queensboro Hall municipal parking garage a week early on Wednesday after tagging the half-century-old structure a safety hazard.
But local leaders said the Department of Transportation has no concrete plan to accommodate hundreds of people — including jurors and court personnel — who use the roughly 500-space facility every day.
Workers handed out flyers to confused drivers Wednesday, outlining nearby private garages and bus routes.
The lot serves both Borough Hall and the Queens Criminal Court facilities in Kew Gardens.
Transportation officials originally planned to close it Oct. 1 but announced late Tuesday it would shutter the next day.
“This came fast,” said Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, who fears frustrated drivers will spend hours circling nearby streets, adding heavy traffic around nearby Public School 99.
“What we need right now is for the city to give us alternatives where people can park,” she said.
One of those options could be to shuttle people from Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and nearby colleges, Katz said.
The borough’s criminal justice system is also expected to take a big hit, a spokesman for District Attorney Richard Brown said.
“The garage’s closing will be extremely burdensome on crime victims, witnesses, jurors and defendants, as well as the surrounding neighborhood,” he said.
21 comments:
Queens Borough Hall is one of the easiest, most accessible locations in the borough through public transportation. Plenty of busses, and the Union Turnpinke subway station can quickly get you anywhere from Jamaica to Long Island City.
The current state of Queens summed up in a single edifice.
Katz was too busy "saving" the Pavilion to notice her building's own parking garage was in this sorry state, among the peeling paint, garbage, shuttered information center, and other signs physical decay at borough hall?
Sorry folks, looks like a law degree from St. John's doesn't automatically make her more "with it" than her predecessor, who could at least claim senior dementia.
Lawyers carrying reams of paper in briefcases aren't schlepping all that on the train or bus. Jurors from all over Queens are required to report there, and many of them live nowhere near the subway lines or buses that run there. It's time to face the fact that for practical reasons, Queens people drive and knock off the B.S. that everywhere in the borough is accessible by public transportation. It can take a good hour or more to get to borough hall from Ridgewood, Glendale, Bayside, Springfield Gardens, Rockaway, etc.
No.
Public transportation is not always the answer. If you're in bayside, douglaston, rockaway, or astoria (or anywhere not near the queens blvd subway) getting over there is significantly easier via car. There are also people from out of state who have to head over to the courthouse - I ran into a sheriff from PA one day in town for something at the courthouse. Do you really think someone who has traveled from outside of NYC is going to be able to find a parking lot and then figure out public transit and then get to the courthouse on time?
The answer is NO.
That said, this is a fucking disgusting. They've known for years that the parking lot was falling down and did nothing. That's how the DOT works: they rather build bike lanes everywhere and magically pretend that doing so solves real world problems. People drive. People usually drive from distances where public transit is not a viable timely option. Pretending that people will not try to drive to the courthouse is like covering your eyes and pretending that there is not someone with a gun pointed at your face.
But hey, this is exactly what those who run this city are doing. 500 car garage? Fuck it, replace it with a 20 slot bike rack and "go green" while cars circle around some more smogging up the neighborhood.
Thanks Deblasio, you anti-queens fuckbag.
'The closure further snarls traffic by the Kew Gardens Interchange, which is undergoing a renovation.'
In the short term, maybe. After days or weeks people realize they can't drive there so they make other plans, relieving traffic on the interchange. This is a good thing for the neighborhood.
Maybe the city just shouldnt run parking garages.
Go to the borough hall of any of the boroughs - Brooklyn is a good example. Its clean, bustling, and nerve center for the borough.
Go to Queens Borough Hall and it exactly fits the dynamic (if you can call it) of Queens. Paranoid security, cluttered drab hallways (there is a dust bunny on the stairs that has been there since the 90s).
I was there once and saw a wooden phone booth on the same passageway as the borough president's office. I asked an aide if it worked (of course they walk by it every day and had no idea). I suggested we use it to see if we can call Dwight Eisenhower. They had no idea who he was.
The leadership of Queens is not very bright, in over their heads, do not understand responsible government or civics, and obvious to everyone (except the borough's community boards) how to plan and develop the borough.
Attitudes bad enough at the top but increasingly being stamped on the borough's residents.
What? Which college has a surplus of available parking?
Crappy plenty of people who could manage on transit or cabs to borough hall drive instead. Some of them will stop driving. Problem solved. No need for the city to run an expensive shuttle bus system that floods a city park with cars, or one that takes limited spots away from students.
But how long would it take for the shuttle from Flushing Meadows Corona Park, as it is suggested?
Useless to waste time on speculating how to get there. Boro Hall has given Queens, once again, a shit sandwich.
Talking about transportation is pointless. They again dealt you a crappy hand of cards.
Your focus should be on replacing the dealer, not the style of cards.
so people would rather spend 30 minutes or longer looking for a spot on the street or in the garage and walking to the courthouse instead of taking an extra train or bus?
Wait, so you mean everyone isn't hopping on their bikes from Bayside or Far Rockaway and pleasantly riding to the court like the DOT thinks everyone will do as they put bike lanes all over the place?
"I was there once and saw a wooden phone booth on the same passageway as the borough president's office. I asked an aide if it worked (of course they walk by it every day and had no idea)."
_______________________________
Shhhh! I need a place to change.
If they allocate money to a Queens project, the city council will just put it into a slush fund or a project for illegals instead.
"so people would rather spend 30 minutes or longer looking for a spot on the street or in the garage and walking to the courthouse instead of taking an extra train or bus?"
The answer is Yes. See the above comments. If you're coming to the courthouse from outside of NYC (which many people do) you are NOT taking public transit.
Public transit is not the answer to everything. Neither are bike lanes.
The DOT. Katz and DeBlasio have basically bent over Queens and fucked it in the ass on this one.
But hey it's Queens, who the fuck cares right? Certainly not city hall.
The city should seize part of the cemetery to build an emergency parking lot to alleviate this crisis.
The city should seize part of the cemetery to build an emergency parking lot to alleviate this crisis.
now that sound like something someone from boro hall would suggest.
......and they would be serious.
The $30 million and counting, spent on Helen Marshall's Civic Atrium should have gone toward the garage repairs and saving the Civic Virtue statue.
Crappy. We need an update on Marshall's folly. Who is using the atrium? If it's being used at all.
With the parking lot gone, expect more placards on the streets of Briarwood and Kew Gardens. Local residents will have no place to park.
Who is using the atrium? If it's being used at all.
You can go through a checklist on how money is spent in Queens - like the cultural institutions we all pay for in Flushing Meadows that is inaccessible to most of the borough, to Chocolate Factory that salves Van Bramers whim and ego for 7 figure amounts.
Money spent in Queens should be decided by a central authority away from the boro and its petty unqualified talent.
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