The Phase II parking on Queens Boulevard began last week. See photos on my post. Personally, on Saturday night I had to circle around 4 times to find on street parking when normally "once around the block" suffices. The businesses and fraternal organizations such as Italian Charities and the Elks are just beginning to realize the insanity of the proposed bike lanes. Watch for a possible uprising. No such thing occurred during Phase I because IMHO the bike lanes traversed sparsely populated terrain. If Phase II doesn't get lunatic de Blasio and the DOT, Phase III will when the bike lanes get extended even further eastward into even more heavily-populated areas.
GtheA
26 comments:
I wish elected officials and advocacy groups would use sense before implementing these "one size fits all" approaches like bike lanes. The bike fanatics fail to consider the needs of people who actually live in an area. Having these lanes is not going to encourage scores of young people to move to the transit deserts of Queens and Brooklyn. Elderly people are not going to start using the lanes instead of their cars. People with money will continue to choose more accessible neighborhoods. And tourists are not going to come to the hinterlands just for the bike lanes on QB. So who exactly are these lanes being built for?
Read about the spoiled brats at Transportation Alternatives. They want bike lanes throughout the city. They think NYC is Amsterdam and we should have bike lanes too.
and legalized hash, but I digress
Fraternal organizations should have their own parking.
Not according to Transportation Alternatives and the City Planning Commission! Parking lots are no good, we must build affordable housing on them.
The only people on bikes in Queens are the Chinese delivery guys! You'd have to be insane to ride a bike in this borough! Many of the drivers don't even have legit licenses - they send in lookalikes for the tests!
Told you years ago,they want our cars.
Why doesn't Transportation Alternatives push for safer, better, cheaper subways, buses, bridges, and tunnels? Why keep pushing bike lanes? My 66 year old father isn't going to bike from Queens to his office in Manhattan. What about our freezing, icy, and snowy winters and hot and unhealthy summers with smog alerts every other day? It's not healthy or normal to bike under such hazardous unhealthy conditions. Right?
This is exactly what I had been talking about on various blogs- the nightmare that these lanes would cause in other areas such as Forest Hills and Rego Park. I live on Queens Blvd in Forest Hills and most of those spots are taken all day long and into the night as well with all the restaurants we have. The place is strapped as far as parking goes. Phase one of this project went through more industrial / residential sections of QB, but all the mom and pop shops further down are going to take a hit from customers who will stop coming because parking will be nearly eliminated- way to to Blaz!!!!! Anyone but deBozo 2017!!!!!!
Tammany Hall revived.
Read it and weep:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-investigation-ties-clinton-de-blasio-billionaire-developer-ratner-new-tammany-hall-scandal/
But your friends at TA will suggest that everyone bike to the restaurants....
I love how back in May when the community board in Elmhurst voted down the bike lanes, deBozo pushed ahead with them anyways and said it was a "no brainer". Nice job BOZO!!!!!
Here's what the current Phase I bike lane is used for: DeBlasio's Bike Lane Boondoggle See any bikes?
There are morons running our municipal government.
They want bike lanes because of the overcrowding and crumbling infrastructure.
Brooklyn has a larger population than Chicago?
Heck what about Flushing? Elmhurst? Jackson Heights?
There is no infrastructure in place to handle the ever growing population.
So the answer is public transportation and bikes.
Some call it socialist urban planning most of us call it insanity.
Tax money is good, ever increasing fares are good, soon bikes will need to be registered, insured like cars, you see the money is good no matter how you slice it and dice it.
The rest of us can be upset and fume all we want.
If de Blasio turns out to be a one-term Mayor and we actually get someone who knows what they're doing (ha!), is there any chance that some of these stupid things (proliferation of bike lanes; 25mph speed limit) will get repealed?
"Some call it socialist urban planning most of us call it insanity."... What we are now facing in NYC is the result of NO planning. Although bike lanes were spoken about in urban planning classes in the 70's the move to bike lanes now is just a desperate attempt to get something in this City that actually moves. Had there been some urban planning going on in the past 50 years the City would have had to deny some of the developers insatiable greed to overpopulate this City. It's to late and now they are grasping at straws
The car haters, who hail mainly from Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, are indifferent to and clueless about the transportation reality of millions of families in the outter boroughs, who have children (yes, children!). The car haters, dressed in a holier than thou--we are saving the Earth--garb, literally want to force families out of their cars, by making it nearly impossible to park, and by transforming our City's wide streets and avenues into one lane roads, which they say "calm" traffic and drivers! I see the empty bike lines in Queens Boulevard every day. The good news is that we can still vote, folks.
No, I really don't think it will be easy to just come in and undo what deBOZO has unleashed. Anyone who would come into office and suggest undoing the sacred bike lanes would be seen unfavorably even though we know how wasteful they are.
GtA's video is what it looks like everyday. I know because I have been commuting to work and back home by bike for half my life, from south ozone and back. I never had any trouble riding with traffic on the service roads, there was always ample room. I find these lanes not liberating at all being emphatic to folks who are denied their personal freedoms and daily routines.
In the past year since these unnecessary lanes have been painted, I may have seen at least 4 or 5 bikers on them. I probably seen more kids skateboarding there using it to play and do tricks on. So it's practically become a skate park.
And one more thing, and I hope this doesn't give certain municipal hacks and those idiots at Transportation Alternatives any ideas, but now that there are more bike commuters in Manhattan along with the childish reckless Shitibikers the bike lanes in that borough are now too crowded, exacerbated by the presence of clueless and arrogant pedestrians of the tourist, asshole and derelict types. And the NYPD constantly parks their vehicles on them too in blatant contempt of them, which doesn't make it right either.
What makes me sicker about these moronic and inconsiderate implementations, is that it's designed to make lives easier for tourists and people who already have it easy. All the bike lanes in the city and Brooklyn Goddamn are all conveniently lined up with all the pretty fugly towers and various other overdeveloped and gentrified spots. There are even 2 way bike lanes. It's utterly unfair and totally incongruous as with everything involving city planning in the past 3 years under this corrupt idiot mayor and his confederacy of dunces in city hall and spineless city council.
When is this madness going to stop?
This explains why I had no problem finding parking on Queens Blvd for the last few months, and then suddenly couldn't find any this week.
Maybe what Manhattan needs is multi-level streets, like in Chicago.
In response to a previous poster, I was just in Chicago and you're right, the multi level streets help and the city is better designed in general, but remember that everything was destroyed in that massive fire in the late 1800's so Chicago had a rebirth of sorts and got the chance to be laid out properly and done over. NYC is built to capacity and starting over with a design that makes more sense isn't possible anymore so they keep adding on and improvising and well, that's how we get all these differing views on how to fix the mess and who wants what, not in my backyard, etc...
Count the cars, then count the bikes
How many bikes do you think you'll see HERE in the future? (Photo from today, Thursday, August 11, 2016) Queens Boulevard service road traffic is backed-up already as the unpopulated bike lane awaits completion.
And it will get worse as this deBlasio-inspired insanity moves eastward into the more heavily populated areas on Queens Boulevard.
Thank you for helping to document this nonsense George. I posted on your blog also. What can be done about this loony?? The community board over there in Elmhurst voted down the damn bike lanes and he told the DOT to move on with them full steam ahead. I feel completely powerless. Shame on anyone who voted him in, now we're screwed. He's F---ing up the city left and right and even if by some miracle we kick him out next year, I fear that many of these things he's implemented are here to stay. He knows nothing about this city. He's not a real New Yorker. Look at how the NYPD has been protesting outside his gym in park slope telling him to get to work and stop clowning around at the gym all morning. So sick of this guy!!!!
Thanks for posting this. I live in the Phase II area, and this has become nothing short of a logistical disaster. We take our kids to the karate school near the corner of Grand Ave, and it is no longer possible to safely drop them off or pick them up without either blocking traffic or stopping in the bike lane. The same probably applies to the number of parents taking kids to tutoring and pre schools in the same area, as there are quite a few. Of course, since the bike lane was completed, I have seen maybe 5 people use it. Also, they have made it so that people must STOP in the middle of traffic in order to merge from local onto the express lanes or vice versa, which also makes conditions unsafe for cars and bicyclists alike. It honestly would have made more sense to scrap the local/express lanes altogether, and put a larger median in the middle, with the bike lanes on it.
I think the bike lanes are great. I'm a homeowner in Woodside for 5 years, along with my wife and child. I use the lanes everyday for my work commute, and while I know it's difficult for your parking, I feel that you may need to consider alternative transportation methods (bus, train, bicycle, bipedalism) if the lanes are causing such hinderance to your parking. Less motor vehicles would create a brighter ambience in our very busy city borough. I do stop at all red lights by the way. Looking forward to more traffic calming initiatives brought fourth by the DOT with the Trans Alt's advocacy. I can empathize, with drivers how this infrastructure change is difficult but ultimately will signal a greater purpose to road priorities.
Post a Comment