More like Death Drive.
Members of Queens Community Board 9 demanded that the city let motor vehicles back on Freedom Drive inside Forest Park for the first time in more than five years, rejecting pleas from parents and other residents to keep the strip car-free.
Dozens of locals — including the head of a nearby elementary school — packed into the unelected civic panel's monthly meeting on Thursday night, asking board members to not go ahead with a plan to ask the Parks Department to return automobiles to the 0.3-mile strip between Myrtle Avenue and Park Lane South that the city closed off during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Residents opposed to reopening Freedom Drive had launched an online petition with more than 630 signatures to keep cars out, and the advocate behind the call said local drivers just wanted a convenient route back.
"A lot of this makes me think that it’s a very small group in the neighborhood that would like their shortcut home back," said Andrew Smith.
With the board poised to ask Parks to allow cars back into the park all the time, officials responded with what they labeled a "compromise": allowing cars on the roadway from October to April, even though that agency and other city experts have seen clear benefits from the closure.
"We were pleasantly surprised to see a continued need and use of this space, and this is what we're all about," said Meira Berkower, the chief of staff for the Parks’s Queens borough commissioner. "That being said, though, we have heard recently that there are those who feel differently, and we're here to consider opening the drive in our off season."
And after hours of public testimony and discussion, the board members voted 33 in favor and nine against to reopen the road between October and April. The vote is, like all community board votes, only advisory, but given that the Parks Department proposed the compromise, it will likely hold.
The vote came after a tumultuous meeting where the opinion of even the principal of the local school was disregarded.
"When the road was previously open, cars often sped down 102nd Street, creating dangerous conditions. Since its closure, the area has become much safer,” said Massiel Lanz, the principal of Public School 66, which is a block away from Freedom Drive.
Lanz's students enjoy activities and do beautification projects inside the currently gated-off roadway, and can safely walk to the adjacent playground – all of which would be at risk by bringing back cars, the head educator said.
“Reopening the road will take away these opportunities and bring back a serious safety risk,” said Lanz.
One local mom-of-two agreed, begging the board memebrs to cast a vote to keep cars out.
“I don't think opening Freedom Drive is a good idea at all. People will race down it. ... It's just going to be terrible,” said Julia Delpalacio.
However, several board members claimed that the closure made the space more dangerous, including one Richmond Hill resident and her daughter, who both relayed an incident where a man with a knife chased after the younger woman in the park.
“A deranged man came out with a knife and raced to them. There was no one around, 911 was called," said Regina Santoro. “We called everyone, they could not get to my kid. So this was not a play for a kid on a bicycle. … My daughter who was assaulted and followed by a knife."
Parks officials said emergency services could unlock the gate with a code, or cut the lock in an emergency, though Capt. Pratima Maldonado of the 102nd Precinct said she didn't know the code.
And a local football coach, who just gave the name Paul, chimed in to complain about supposed congestion — and preemptively blamed children for their own deaths in crashes.
"Open that road because the congestion ... is ridiculous," he said. "Your kid needs to learn how to cross the street and look, and if they're riding down there with a bicycle at 100 miles an hour, if they don't get killed there, they'll get killed somewhere else.”
Despite the fear-mongering, the road changes did not increase nearby congestion, according to Albert Silvestri, the Department of Transportation's Deputy Borough Commissioner for Queens. Indeed, Silvestri said the changes made the area safer.
"We believe that it actually has created a very safe condition at both Myrtle and Park Lane South," Silvestri said at the meeting. "Our position has been to keep it as is."
Reopening the road part-time will likely confuse people who have gotten used to the closure, said one Forest Hills resident.
"All of a sudden you allow cars and there's going to be kids who might not know the change is happening, and that's going to be an accident waiting to happen," said Andy Guo. "Forest Park is one of the crown jewels in our neighborhood, and we need to protect it from cars."
The central Queens board members have for years been pushing the city to reopen Freedom Drive to cars, and last year, its chairperson Sherry Algredo signed onto a letter with Council Member Joann Ariola asking Parks to open its gates, claiming its car-free setup negatively reminded locals of the pandemic.
"Four years after that initial closure, residents in the areas around Forest Park are still left with this lingering reminder of a dark period in New York's history," Ariola's letter said [PDF]. "This reminder forces them to take unnecessary detours around the park, and drastically increases travel time for local residents."
The battle to keep public space for people not cars echoes a similar effort by politicians on Staten Island who successfully lobbied Parks to bring cars back on a road running through Silver Lake Park this spring after a pandemic-era closure, claiming without evidence that it would make the space safer from crimes.
It's also a setback for a city that has been booting cars from park drives for years now to great success – just take a look at Central or Prospect parks.
