DOT’s Plan for Thomson Ave Caters to Cars, Not the Thousands of Students Heading to School

A DOT redesign proposed for Thomson Avenue by LaGuardia Community College doesn't do enough for street safety, and Queens volunteers with Transportation Alternatives are pressing the agency to come back with a stronger plan. LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow agrees, calling on DOT to incorporate more robust safety features for walking and biking.

Thomson is a crowded pedestrian street and the site of several schools. It's also a wide, two-way, six lane road that carries motor vehicles to and from the Queensboro Bridge, which is swamped by drivers drawn to the free crossing over the East River. The street is designed to cater to the car traffic, not everyone who works and goes to school on Thomson.

In 2013, a speeding motorist heading eastbound on Thomson drove onto the sidewalk and killed Tenzin Drudak, 16, a student at nearby Applied Communications High School.

After Drudak's death, DOT made some engineering tweaks to nearby intersections, and last year the agency presented a larger capital project that would widen the crowded sidewalk where Drudak was killed by six feet [PDF].

But the plan has serious flaws. On the other side of the street, DOT wants to narrow the sidewalk by 10 feet. There is no provision for cycling on one of the few street connections linking Long Island City to the rest of Queens over the Sunnyside rail yard. Thomson would retain highway-like dimensions for motor vehicle traffic -- with wider lanes making speeding even more prevalent.

A petition launched by Queens resident, LaGuardia professor, and TransAlt volunteer Joby Jacob seeks a deeper commitment to safe street design in an area crowded with students and workers.

If Thomson were "designed with vulnerable users as the first priority and moving car congestion as the secondary priority," the petition to DOT states, car lanes would not be widened, pedestrian crossings would be broken up with median islands, and people biking to school or to work would have protected bike lanes as they approach their destinations.

LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow sent a statement calling on DOT to do better:

Jessame Hannus, a volunteer with TransAlt in Queens, said Thomson is hard to avoid when biking between Long Island City and points east. "Thomson is a natural bike route toward Queens Boulevard from LIC but it is a terrifying ride," she wrote in an email. "Drivers going on and off the bridge are given highway cues everywhere they look and behave accordingly. Going into LIC there is no safe way to stay out of the way of bridge drivers."

A full sidewalk rebuild, as put forward by DOT, does not come cheap. If the city is going to spend the time and money on a long-term overhaul of a key connection in the Queens street network, the design has to do more for walking and biking than what DOT is proposing.

Updated at 3:00 p.m. to include the statement from Gail Mellow and quote from Jessame Hannus.