Jackson Heights

Courtesy of Clarence Eckerson, Jr., here are some more scenes from the Jackson Heights pedestrian plaza that don't fit the New York Times' preferred narrative. Clarence says he passed through the plaza three times yesterday and it was bustling each time. On a Thursday.

Gotta hand it to the Times for some devious photo editing in today's Metro section. Check out the barren seating and shuttered storefronts in the shot that accompanies Sarah Maslin Nir's two-sides-to-every-story piece on the new Jackson Heights plaza. That plaza must really be a failure, right?

Reader Marcus Woollen submits this picture of the Jackson Heights pedestrian plaza on 37th Road taken yesterday afternoon.

Earlier this month you might have noticed a few press accounts about merchants in Jackson Heights who think a new public plaza on one short block of 37th Road is crimping their bottom line. The plaza is actually part of a much broader plan to improve street safety, speed bus trips, and reduce traffic congestion in Jackson Heights, which neighborhood groups and NYC DOT have been working on for years without receiving much media attention. Now that there's a tinge of conflict, the press is all over it -- an innovative and community-driven transportation project has turned into a story about shopkeepers upset over the removal of 20 parking spaces.

Clarence sends over this photo of the newly car-free block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street in Jackson Heights. Since this picture was taken, the asphalt on this block has been coated with an epoxy-and-gravel surface, and it looks like a two-way bike path will be striped on one side of the street.

At least one witness told police that a driver ran a red light before a collision last week that resulted in the death of a Jackson Heights pedestrian, according to reports.

When large numbers of pedestrians, trucks and cars battle for limited space, you get a traffic mess. When that traffic mess is in one of the nation’s first high-density garden communities, which now is also one of the nation’s most diverse communities, you get Jackson Heights.

NYC DOT's Jackson Heights Transportation Study already has some of the snazziest online resources of any department project, but to get the full scoop on the changes due for the neighborhood, head over to one of the two public meetings being held tomorrow.