Anarchy on the Belt Parkway

Impunity City

 The location of this is on 124th and South Conduit Blvd in South Ozone Park and it’s a remote residential area north of the JFK airport. Barely any pedestrian or even bike commuting goes here. The actual exit ramp for 130 st. is about a few blocks east.

But apparently, those venturous drivers looking to depart from the Belt didn’t want to wait that long…

Former Belt Parkway toxic dump mountain is now a state park

Curbed New York

After 70 years of promises, Brooklyn’s newest waterfront park is finally open for visitors.

The first section of Shirley Chisholm State Park recently made its official debut on a site that was previously known as the 110-acre Pennsylvania Avenue Landfill. Situated on the northern coast of Jamaica Bay in East New York, near Starrett City, this vibrant new green space has opened up the shoreline here for the first time in generations.

The words “charming” and “fun” don’t often come to mind when walking around New York City’s polluted landfills. Yet somehow, a walk through this new park is just that—a surprisingly enjoyable ramble through a delightfully varied landscape of wildflower meadows, native grasslands, hidden beaches, and bustling fishing piers. Butterflies and songbirds fill the air, while cooling breezes waft in from Jamaica Bay.

Though it has only been open for a week, the park is already a hit with the neighborhood. During its first weekend, the parking lot was filled to capacity and every two-wheeler was checked out of its Bike Library, which is run by Recycle-A-Bicycle. Parents pushed baby strollers along meandering gravel hiking trails, while fishermen lined the piers along Jamaica Bay, happily pulling in dozens of porgies.

The second section of this park, at the adjoining Fountain Avenue Landfill, won’t be complete until 2021, but for a community that has been cut off from the waterfront for decades, any access to the water is no small thing. “I’ve been waiting for this for 20 or 30 years,” said one fisherman, as he cast out into the waters of Jamaica Bay. “I moved here in 1986, and they were working on it then, piece by piece, off and on, over the years.”

"With liberty and freedom to build crap"

"This corner on Albert Road and Hawtree Street by the Aqueduct Train Station has been vacant for over four decades. (Hell, maybe more, I am going by how long I have been alive.) Anyway, suddenly this regal looking monstrosity has sprouted on that corner.

I cannot fathom any rationale why someone would build and some moron bureaucrat in the DOB approve building something on this corner which contains a very busy traffic corridor with the Belt Parkway exit that's maybe 30 yards away and an overpass from Howard Beach where the only direction is towards this properties path, much less build something this massive and garish.

This may be the holy grail of Queens Crap and may be the last straw when it comes to the issue of over-development and in the case of this neighborhood, incongruous and ludicrous house building."

JQ LLC, Impunity City (Your City)

Unfilled potholes cost taxpayers a bundle

From Crains:

New York City should be quicker to repair potholes, which have cost taxpayers $138 million in settlements over the last six years, City Comptroller Scott Stringer said Thursday.

Mr. Stringer released an analysis that showed that the Belt Parkway had the most pothole claims involving vehicles over the six-year period —706— and Broadway was the street with the most pedestrian trip-and-fall claims at 195.

"If you happen to drive on the Belt, please know that you are in our thoughts and prayers," Mr. Stringer joked at a news conference in Greenwich Village.

Mr. Stringer said it took an average of 6.7 days for the Department of Transportation to complete a pothole work order in the first four months of fiscal year 2015, nearly triple the 2.4 days it took in the previous year.

This will hopefully make Jamaica Bay cleaner

From the Queens Courier:

Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that now overflow into ecologically fragile Jamaica Bay every year will be diverted to treatment plants under a new project being launched by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

A new $40 million initiative split into two smaller projects is set to begin in 2015 in South Ozone Park by the Belt Parkway to reduce sewer overflows into both Bergen and Thurston Basin, two bodies of water that ultimately lead into Jamaica Bay.

City officials said they are taking pains to minimize the impact on traffic along the Belt Parkway from construction of one of the new sewage overflow pipelines that will cross under the highway.

The project is designed to ensure that about 300 million gallons a year of combined sewer overflow will be routed to the Jamaica Wastewater Treatment Plant, where it will be treated to Federal Clean Water Act standards, rather than being discharged untreated into the tributaries of Jamaica Bay.

As of now, there are two 36-inch sewer lines carrying sewer overflow from North Conduit Avenue under the Belt Parkway to 150th Street and 126th Avenue. When they reach that point, they connect to a 72-inch sewer line, ultimately bringing all that overflow to the Jamaica Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The DEP said that due to increased development of southern Queens, the existing pipes “no longer have sufficient capacity to carry combined flow generated north of the Belt Parkway and act as a bottleneck in the area’s drainage system.”

Once again, why was development allowed without improved infrastructure in place first?

The end of Queens horse racing?

From the Queens Chronicle:

Several sources have confirmed that demolition of Aqueduct Race Track for a new soccer stadium is not off the table.
It was announced last month that Major League Soccer was looking at Aqueduct as a site for a soccer-specific stadium to host the New York City Football Club, an expansion team that will begin playing next year at Yankee Stadium.

“The discussions leave open the possibility of the racetrack being torn down and the stadium being built on that site,” one high-level source said. “[The New York Racing Association] would make Belmont Racetrack a year-round venue and hold winter racing there.”

The source did say, however, that is not the most likely or desired option, noting that the favored choice is to build the stadium on top of lightly used parking fields owned by the city on the southern end of the Aqueduct site, near the Belt Parkway.

But building a stadium even on the 20 acres of city property currently leased by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would require going over some hurdles.

During a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure in 2004 dealing with PANYNJ property leased from the city in Queens, Community Boards 10 and 12 suggested forcing the plots of land at Aqueduct that includes those lots to go through ULURP in the event they are proposed to be used for anything other than parking.

The ULURP would require public hearings and approval from Borough President Melinda Katz, the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

Should something go awry with that option, the track proposal could emerge as a backup plan.

The track itself is on state-owned land, which would require state approval to both demolish the track and build the stadium.

DEP project may bring traffic nightmare

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) proposed to spread a citywide project to South Ozone Park next August to prevent untreated sewage from ultimately making its way into the bay.

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) result from the combination of this domestic sewage and industrial wastewaters with storm water. The project, once completed, will monitor this, and consists of adding higher level sewer separation, wet weather stabilization, drainage basins and more in the event of a future storm.

Currently, plans are in preliminary stages. There will be period for public comment, and the DEP is working with the DOT on road closure potentials.

According to proposal plans, once construction begins, 126th Street between South Conduit Avenue and 150th Avenue will be closed for one year, as will the 150th Avenue westbound lane.

Additionally, the Belt Parkway’s on-ramp near 150th Avenue will be closed for 22 months, and one eastbound lane will be closed for one year during nighttime DOT work hours.

North Conduit Avenue near 150th Avenue will also experience various lane closures for up to two years. A traffic analysis concluded that the left lane can be closed for two months, and the second lane closed at night for two, one-month periods.

The green space between the Belt Parkway and North Conduit Avenue will be closed for two years.

There are also additional flagging areas for trucks, and temporary, short-term closures for truck unloading.

Mystery lot rental

"Good morning,

It appears that someone has taken over city property and are using it as their rental property. On South Conduit Avenue between Lefferts Blvd and 124th Street, there is city land that at one time was a grassy area along the Belt Parkway but now it's a series of parking areas for airport parking and oil tanker trucks. This is the second time someone in this area as openly hijacked city land and blatantly used it as their own. This occurred in nearby Spring Creek in Brooklyn where someone took over acres of land and used it as a parking lot for tractor trailer trucks and tankers. Please look into this outrageous activity. Queens Crap's web site is our last hope in saving Queens from its greedy politicians.

Thank you,
Queens Guy"

Ok, so I checked the Tax Map to see who owns the parcels in question and it revealed no answers. So who owns them and who's renting them out?

Is this the Belt or the GCP?

A brief glimpse of what was then a progressive concept in transportation: a parkway. It doesn't look it, but it's located in Greater New York. My grandfather filmed these scenes in the 1940's. He didn't note the exact location, but it appears to be The Belt Parkway somewhere along Jamaica Bay in the Borough of Queens - or is it Grand Central Parkway near Willow Lake in Queens?

The black and white "mystery highway" appears to be in Queens also, or further out on Long Island. Grand Central Parkway, perhaps?

Robert W. Martens
March, 2011

Belt Parkway traffic headaches coming

From the Times Ledger:

The city Department of Transportation has begun a half-billion-dollar rehabilitation project to restore seven bridges on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, which is expected to affect Queens residents significantly.

The Queens Borough Board heard in detail Monday about the massive project, which will renew and rebuild the seven bridges, most of which project officials said “have passed their useful life,” dating back to the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The work began last month and is scheduled to be finished by October 2014. The bridges are at Fresh Creek Basin, Rockaway Parkway, Paerdegat Basin, Mill Basin, Gerritsen Inlet, Nostrand Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue.

“Although these bridges are located within Brooklyn, construction on them is expected to have a great effect on many Queens residents while work goes on,” said Maura McCarthy, Queens borough commissioner for the DOT.

Group floats highway-in-the-sky proposal

From the NY Post:

The Belt Parkway would be a great place to construct an elevated express lane from Sheepshead Bay all the way to Kennedy Airport, a couple of community leaders are proclaiming this week -- and they want to use federal stimulus dollars to get the job done.

“We are stuck,” Community Board 15 Chair Theresa Scavo said. ”The Belt Parkway is antiquated and cannot handle the volume of traffic. The only place to go is up.”

The idea to erect an elevated express lane over the Belt Parkway is no pie-in-the-sky scheme, according to Scavo, and she already has enlisted the support of Manhattan Beach Neighborhood (MBNA} Association President Alan Ditchek.

“It’s a win-win situation,” Ditchek told members of the MBNA at P.S. 195 last week. “It would put people to work and everyone would be happy with the results.”

Seven spans along the Belt Parkway are already slated for upgrade as part of an extensive bridge rehabilitation program.

In addition, the city’s Department of Design & Construction is about to embark on a rehabilitation project of its own involving guardrails, drainage and catch basins.

According to Scavo, erecting an elevated express lane over the Belt Parkway could be accomplished in as little as two years.

“Very little of the stimulus money is being used,” Scavo suggested. “No one is even putting in for it.”