Queens

There are a couple of events focusing on safer streets in Queens this weekend.

Union Turnpike, running 10 miles through the midsection of Queens and across the border to Nassau County, is one of the borough's most unsafe places to walk or bike. Now, a group of eastern Queens residents is looking to extend an existing walking and biking path through state- and city-owned property parallel to the multi-lane road.

Traffic fatality numbers usually get the headlines, but as a measure of how safe or dangerous it is to walk and bike, injuries are the more stable metric. Since 2003, according to state DMV data, an average of just under 14,000 people were injured by motorists while walking and biking in the city each year.

Medical professionals and transportation experts convened Thursday for the third New York City Summit on Pedestrian Injury, hosted by Elmhurst Hospital. The day-long event brought transportation officials and advocates together with doctors who witness the destruction caused by reckless drivers in the city every day.

Two NYC pedestrians were killed by motorists over the weekend. One of the victims was a senior; the other was struck by a hit-and-run driver in the City Council district represented by Eric Ulrich, where at least five pedestrians have died in traffic in 2013.

A young father struck while on his way to work was the first of at least seven people killed by New York City motorists since last Tuesday. Of the five crashes where the driver remained at the scene -- three in Manhattan, one in Staten Island, and one in Queens -- none were charged with a crime.

A man was struck and killed by two motorists yesterday in a Queens precinct where drivers have killed at least two other people since late September.

Three pedestrians were killed on NYC sidewalks today in two separate crashes. Just before 7:30 a.m. on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, a 22-year-old man driving a new Camaro ran over and killed two men on the sidewalk, and just before 1 p.m., a woman was killed on an East Harlem corner after a taxi driver struck a box truck, which careened onto the sidewalk. So far, no charges have been filed, though witnesses say the Queens Boulevard driver was speeding and the East Harlem cabbie ran a red light, according to reports.

The MTA is working on a plan for a short busway in Ridgewood that would run for six-tenths of a mile beneath the elevated M tracks, between Fresh Pond Road and Palmetto Street. While the project wouldn't transform a car-choked traffic sewer into a pedestrian-friendly transit boulevard (the right-of-way is currently a series of weed-strewn parking lots), it could be NYC's first new separated busway since the Fulton Mall opened in the 1970s.