D.O.T.'s building bike lane walls

#ScenesOfQueens

Circus act on bike lane. Kew Gardens pic.twitter.com/EpAdC25rM1

— JQ LLC: Impunity Swagger (@ImpunityCity) February 18, 2022

 

 

LIC Post 

Three protected bike lanes in Queens will be getting safety upgrades as part of an effort to better protect cyclists from cars throughout the city, the Department of Transportation announced Friday.

Bike lanes in Long Island City, Astoria and Forest Hills will be among the first lanes in the city to have their plastic bollards replaced with cement barriers through the initiative. Four Manhattan bike lanes are also scheduled for the first updates.

The three Queens lanes that will be hardened are Crescent Street from Queens Plaza North to Hoyt Avenue North in Long Island City and Astoria; Vernon Boulevard from 46th Avenue to 30th Road in Long Island City and Astoria; and Queens Boulevard from 73rd Street to Yellowstone Boulevard in Forest Hills.

The three Queens and four Manhattan protected bike lanes are the first lanes in the program. The DOT plans to harden a total 20 miles of the 40 existing miles of delineator-protected bike lanes in the city by the end of 2023. Existing plastic bollards currently separating bike lanes from car lanes will be removed and replaced with cement Jersey barriers that weigh several tons.

“New York City’s cyclists deserve to be safe everywhere, but especially in protected lanes – where drivers will too often disrespect and block that critical space,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “We have an actionable, concrete plan to protect cyclists and we are going to deliver on this work to keep our lanes clear.”

Barriers proposed for NY Harbor

From WNYC:

In a series of public information sessions this week, the Army Corps is presenting five options for protecting the area's waterfront, four of which involve storm surge barriers:

- a five-mile long barrier at the southernmost border of the lower bay, between Sandy Hook, N.J., and Breezy Point in the Rockaways;
- a smaller barrier between Staten Island and Brooklyn, across the channel that the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge spans, accompanied by gates across the mouth to Jamaica Bay and Arthur Kill;
- a series of berms and sea walls along low-lying portions of the New Jersey and New York City waterfront, along with small gates across some waterways;
- and an option that would only use berms and sea walls.

New Bloomberg strategy: propose things that will never happen

From the Politicker:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a nearly $20 billion master plan Tuesday to shield the city from future Hurricane Sandys, complete with levees, sand dunes, bulkheads, flood walls and a proposed “Seaport City.”

The plan calls for the installation of removable “adaptable floodwalls” in riverfront locations across the city, including Hunts Point in the Bronx, along the East Harlem waterfront, the Lower East Side and the Financial District, as well as a new levee and floodwall system along the East Shore of Staten Island, with barriers that could rise as high as 15 to 20 feet.

The proposal, which the mayor is set to outline in a major speech at Brooklyn Navy’s Yard’s Sandy-damaged Duggal Greenhouse, also calls for the construction of a new dune systems in Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula, with a “double dune” planned for Breezy Point.

While the mayor has less than seven months left in office, he also proposed building a new “Seaport City” on the east side of Manhattan, similar to the existing Battery Park City near the Financial District. The new development, which could stretch all the way to Brooklyn, would be built on “a multi-purpose levee with raised edge elevations,” designed to protect the East River shoreline south of the Brooklyn Bridge, while creating a new mini-neighborhood.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has previously said that a sea wall plan was “not practical,” also wants to build a storm surge barrier at Newtown Creek and along Coney Island Creek, and announced plans to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility adding “surge barriers” across the mouth of Jamaica Bay to protect communities in Queens.

Meanwhile, people are getting creamed with insurance premiums and building costs.

Is this in our future?

From the Daily News:

Picture an 80-foot rock barrier rising from the Atlantic Ocean, stretching for 5 miles from Breezy Point, Queens, to Sandy Hook, N.J. — and topped with a new highway.

Or a 1,700-foot wall spanning the Arthur Kill, featuring a pedestrian walkway, a bike path, hydroelectric power and a system of locks for passing ships.

Or maybe a towering structure in the shadow of the Verrazano Bridge, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, complete with twin 640-foot gates.

In post-Sandy New York, plans to harness New York Harbor and its surrounding waterways with such multibillion-dollar projects almost instantly turned more tangible than theoretical.

In the search for answers, it’s now like Robert Moses is battling King Poseidon in the globally-warmed waters around the nation’s largest city.

Proponents suggest the barriers — already successful in Russia’s St. Petersburg and across the flood-prone Netherlands — could prevent a disaster repeat.

Count City Council President Christine Quinn among that group. She’s proposed a $16 billion storm surge barrier as part of a possible plan to safeguard the city.

Count Mayor Bloomberg among the skeptics. After Sandy, he noted that “you can’t build a wall up to the sky.”

But you can build one to lessen the impact the next time a hurricane hits town, engineers and experts say — and the city has already endured two in as many years.

Protecting the coast from storm surges

From Huffington Post:

The city is seriously considering a proposal to erect huge storm surge barriers as part of a comprehensive waterfront plan meant to protect New York from rising sea levels, officials told DNAinfo.

Community Board 4 member and longtime Chelsea leader Robert Trentlyon said he was told late last month that the city was going to include the proposed barriers in their Vision 2020 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan.

A spokesperson for the Department of City Planning confirmed that storm surge barriers are under consideration for inclusion the report, on a list of other possible strategies for protection against storm surges and sea level rise.

Residents of particularly vulnerable lower Manhattan neighborhoods have been pushing for the city to consider the barriers for the past year, and are hopeful that they'll succeed when the Vision 2020 is unveiled in the next month.

Proponents say the threat of storm surge floods to Manhattan is real, and they cite other metropolitan cities like London, Rotterdam and St. Petersburg, which have already taken steps to install massive storm surge barriers.

New York is already overdue for a category three level storm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's average return periods. The last one, 1938's Long Island Express led to over 700 deaths across the mid-Atlantic and New England.

If the city takes the barriers seriously enough, proponents say, the next step would be to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to commission a study on installing them at the Upper East River, the Verrazano Narrows and Arthur Kill.

Hi, see me frantically waving over here? Yeah...with all the building going on along the waterfront in this borough, what about protecting Queens?

Breezy Point-Sandy Hook hurricane barrier suggested

From Yahoo(AP):

When experts sketch out nightmare hurricane scenarios, a New York strike tends to be high on the list.

Besides shaking skyscrapers, a major hurricane could send the Atlantic Ocean surging into the nation's largest city, flooding Wall Street, subways and densely packed neighborhoods.

As a new hurricane season starts Monday, some scientists and engineers are floating an ambitious solution: Barriers to choke off the surging sea and protect flood-prone areas.

The plan involves deploying giant barriers and gates that would move into place — in some cases rising out of the water — for storms. One proposal calls for a 5-mile-long barrier between New Jersey and Queens.

No one has formally proposed the structures, which would require extensive government reviews and billions of dollars.

But a first-ever conference on the subject this spring drew 100 researchers and engineers, who provided various conceptual designs. City emergency management officials say they're interested in hearing more if details develop.