Long Island City

DOT is drawing up plans for a dedicated bike lane on the Pulaski Bridge, according to the office of Assembly Member Joe Lentol, and should have a final design ready before the end of the year

Last night, the full board of Manhattan Community Board 6 passed a resolution in support of a DOT plan that would fill in a gap between two sections of Second Avenue's protected bike lane by replacing a car travel lane with parking from 23rd Street to 14th Street. Across the East River, Queens CB 1's transportation committee was receptive to community requests for traffic calming on 21st Street in Astoria and Long Island City, asking advocates to come back with more specific requests.

There are two community board meetings tonight on complete streets plans in Manhattan and Queens.

Two weeks after a woman was killed while crossing Queens Plaza, Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, joined by other elected officials and community leaders, stood at the busy intersection to call for better NYPD crash investigations, safety measures from DOT, and a citywide zero-tolerance policy for pedestrian deaths. Van Bramer's press conference comes just days before the City Council's public safety and transportation committees hold an oversight hearing on reforming NYPD crash investigations.

The Dutch Kills neighborhood sits on the northern edge of Long Island City, hemmed in by Northern Boulevard and Queens Plaza, with the East River to the west and Astoria to the north. Dangerous traffic is an everyday presence -- and not just on the main arteries nearby. After a number of car-on-car crashes, neighborhood advocates joined with elected officials yesterday, calling on DOT to implement traffic-calming measures.

Western Queens is set to receive a slate of street safety and bicycle network improvements. The projects will add shared lane markings and bike lanes to neighborhood streets, improve connections to the Astoria waterfront and Greenpoint, and address pedestrian safety at the site of a fatal curb-jumping crash. The progress comes after more than a year of work between DOT and Community Board 2, and coincides with Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer's push for bike-share expansion to Long Island City and Sunnyside.

On March 11, Tenzin Drudak, 16, was on the sidewalk on Thomson Avenue across from Applied Communications High School, where he went to school, when the driver of a maroon Dodge Caravan careened across three lanes of oncoming traffic, between metal barriers, onto the sidewalk, injuring four and killing Drudak.

At a rally this afternoon on the steps of City Hall, Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer called for the city's bike-share program to be expanded to western Queens as quickly as possible.