Queens

After DOT redesigned the Queens Boulevard service roads in Woodside, the number of people biking doubled while pedestrian and cyclist injuries dropped. Last night, more than 100 people packed into the cafeteria of P.S. 139 in Rego Park to weigh in on extending the redesign east to Yellowstone Boulevard.

In the year after NYC DOT installed protected bike lanes and other safety measures between Roosevelt Avenue and 73rd Street in Woodside, pedestrian and cyclist injuries declined more than 40 percent, while bike counts doubled.

Phase two of the Queens Boulevard redesign, in Elmhurst, is a significant safety improvement that's weakened by a major detour near the Queens Center Mall.

If DOT is going to implement a safer design of 111th Street in Corona, it won't be thanks to the local community board.

Yesterday morning, a driver struck and killed 13-year-old Jazmine Marin as she walked across Cross Bay Boulevard at 149th Avenue on her way to school. The location is deadly -- one other person has been struck and killed there since 2012, and Cross Bay is one of the most dangerous streets in the city. From 2009 to 2013, 17 pedestrians lost their lives on Cross Bay and Woodhaven Boulevard (the name of the same street north of Liberty Avenue) [PDF].

More than a year after DOT first proposed a redesign of 111th Street in Corona to make it safer for residents to access Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the city has failed to follow through and implement the project.

When 78-year-old Michael Schenkman was killed by a speeding motorist on Northern Boulevard last month, he was on his daily ride to Joe Michaels Mile, a bike path that runs for two and a half miles along the Cross Island Parkway. Now business owners and residents in Little Neck and Douglaston are reiterating calls for safe bike access to the popular cycling route.

Update: According to NYPD collision location data, the crash occurred on Grand Central Parkway near LaGuardia Airport. H/t to reader Jules.

A bicycle and pedestrian greenway that connects protected bike paths on the waterfront to Queens Plaza and Queens Boulevard has become a parking lot, with private and government-placarded cars lining its southern curb for months.