Queens Civic Panel Endorses Mamdani’s Super-Sized Astoria Bike Lane

The city should move ahead with Mayor Mamdani’s plan for protected bike lanes and traffic-calming on the entire length of 31st Street in Astoria, the local community board recommended on Tuesday.

Queens Community Board 1’s 35-4 vote in support of the Department of Transportation’s proposed redesign came at the tail-end of a four-hour meeting attended by more than 200 people, where speakers in favor of the project far outnumbered speakers in opposition.

“I’m delighted to think that I’m not going to have to take my life into my hands when I go to the optometrist on 31st Street,” Margaret Oppenheimer, who described herself as a 31-year Astoria resident and “year-round” cyclist, told board members.

Oppenheimer was one of at least 33 people to speak in favor of the redesign, compared to just 15 who spoke against it, by Streetsblog’s count. Every elected official representing the area has also endorsed the project.

DOT put forward the plan to redesign the entire length of 31st Street in Astoria last week after a shorter version of the project ran into legal trouble last year, when Queens Judge Cheree Buggs disregarded years of legal precedent that gives DOT broad discretion over city streets and ordered the agency to nix the project.

The CB1 vote culminated a year-long saga that pitted a handful of 31st Street businesses against Astoria’s well-organized safe streets advocacy community. Opponents on Tuesday were backed for a short while by firefighters from FDNY Firehouse Engine 312, who loomed in the front of the room before exiting all at once about 45 minutes into the meeting.

But the firefighters’ concerns, as articulated by a union representative who spoke later on their behalf, failed to convince board members that the bike lane would push fire trucks “20 feet from the curb,” as the union rep put it, since DOT adjusted its design to create an 11-foot open space next to the curb that the trucks can use in emergencies.

“It feels like common sense that having a 11-foot clear path next to the curb is going to provide more access for a ladder truck than being underneath the elevated train,” CB1 member Adam Fisher-Cox said ahead of the board’s vote.

Members of the public who spoke in support of the project, meanwhile, batted away remarks like those from one opponent who suggested “they ought to check IDs to see where these people are living.”

“I’m a lifelong Astorian, which seems to be important to some people here,” project supporter Robert Reichenbach testified. “We all need to adjust. Change is hard, but it’s necessary.”

From 2021 to 2025, NYPD reported 502 traffic injuries on 31st Street, including 23 severe injuries, plus two pedestrian deaths and one “motorized two-wheeler” death. The street ranks in the top 10 percent most dangerous corridors in Queens.

“I was always afraid to cross that area, just as a regular pedestrian, and I was very mobile. Now, 50 years later, I’m terrified,” CB1 member Stella Nicolaou said before voting in favor of the redesign. “I don’t think anything could be worse than what’s there now. I’m not a bike rider, etc., but I think whatever [DOT]’s going to bring is gonna bring a little bit more safety than we have now.”