Jackson Heights Life

I don't know if this has been suggested before, but has anyone considered converting 34th Ave to a one way street and closing half of it permanently?  This would allow the continued use of the open street for recreation, while allowing traffic to proceed in at least one direction.  This should relieve much of the congestion the current setup causes during the day, and would eliminate the need for the volunteers to set up and remove the barricades every day.  Maybe the center median could be extended to the curbs, or alternately converted to a protected bike lane, although we'd miss the greenery for sure.  Just a thought.

Everything sounds good on paper. Reality is another story. Before anything becomes "permanent" there needs to be a complete and unbiased study and then a trail run.

I can see it now - of course the 34th Avenue Mall supporters will want the westbound lane closed to add onto Travers. That means 35th Avenue becomes eastbound. The Q49 will have to run on both avenues. You could say the bus on both avenues might better service the neighborhood. It also means they will turn onto 75th Street to continue the route to Roosevelt.

The 35th / 75th intersection has been dumped on enough:

1) The change of direction to southbound, thanks to the Travers extension, and creating a 24 hour highway of noise and pollution.
2) The Q47 was rerouted up 35th and onto 75th to accommodate the 73rd congestion, and giving us Diversity Plaza. Really this
    only served the Desi community. No one else uses Diversity Plaza. And if they had enforced traffic flow on 73rd and 37th none
    of this would have happened. Maybe there should be no parking or standing on 73rd and 74th between Roosevelt and 37th
    except for late night.
3) 73rd traffic that can't move southbound overflows now onto 75th

Don't add more havoc to an area that has already been compromised in order to accommodate everyone else!
Limit the days or hours of 34th closure if not abandon the idea altogether. It just doesn't get enough usage to warrant being closed while agitating everyone else on 35th and 37th.

I don't see anyone addressing the real problem- that there is simply too much motor vehicle traffic in and through our community.
Why should a great neighborhood amenity be compromised to accommodate people (many not JH residents) driving to and through our community?
Sure, plenty of people in the neighborhood own vehicles and use them to commute or to make longer trips, but how many people in the neighborhood drive to go less than a mile within the neighborhood, and in such a dense neighborhood is that type of travel really practical or efficient?
Sure the closure of 34th Ave affects the levels of traffic on other local streets, but there must be other options than going back to the status quo of making 34th Ave another alternative car sewer to Northern Blvd. The residents of our community young, old, and everything in between deserve better. 35th Ave should not remain the alternative car sewer to Northern Blvd either.

One possibility, which would be difficult in the short term but beneficial in the long term would be to for the DOT to redesign the streets to discourage driving in JH. Restricting through traffic on 35th Ave (with exceptions for buses and school buses), coupled with sufficient signage and enforcement to discourage through traffic  on our community streets would be difficult to achieve, but not impossible. Yes it would be much easier to go back to what we had before, but it would be a short term solution to a long term problem. In a few years, the whole neighborhood will be as congested as it is now with 34th open (because it is currently open, not closed) and our quality of life will still suffer. Our community deserves better.
If we make driving easier, more people will continue to drive here, if we make it more difficult to drive here, less people will choose to do so.

Thank you for bringing up parking ShinjukuBaby, I'm not sure how I forgot to mention that.
The city could also do much better in enforcing double parking and other violations.
Over a year ago the city implemented the open corridor program on Roosevelt Ave. During the program, the amount of traffic agents aggressively moving along anyone who even attempted to stop along the curb at Roosevelt Ave was something I had never seen before, and was a bit of overkill as the Ave was completely wide open with very little traffic. The minute the program ended, the enforcement just disappeared and Roosevelt turned back into a clogged double parking shit show. Instead of simply targeting that enforcement at double parkers that cause the problem, the city just let everything go back to the way it was.

The point is that parking would not even need to be totally eliminated to make 35th Ave flow smoother. Dedicated delivery loading zones on each block coupled with aggressive enforcement of double parking would make a world of difference. That wouldn't necessarily solve our problem of too many people driving through our neighborhood, but it would be a reasonable compromise.

Quote from: ShinjukuBaby on April 15, 2021, 06:07:10 AM

This neighborhood should NOT be organized around increasing car travel.

I get the impression that a lot of "car travel" is just people driving around in circles for hours trying to find a parking spot

In retrospect the big co-op buildings should have built more underground parking garages, but I guess they were built before parking was a problem

I agree. Organizing a neighborhood around cars is from another era. The Robert Moses era. 1950s.

Famously, Robert Moses' ideas were defeated by Jane Jacobs' concepts of community, the streets for the people and not for the priority of cars in the 1960s.

It's time Jackson Hts made the streets for the people. And not for the priority of cars in 2021 onwards.

The Robert Moses way of thinking leads to creating cities like Los Angeles. And New York is the opposite of Los Angeles.

And built Travers Park.

Travers Park is a tiny playground that replaced a 9-hole golf course. A net loss of green space in an area sorely lacking in green space. Although my apartment building wouldn't be here, can you imagine if they had built a real park instead of selling the land to developers?

Quote from: r on April 15, 2021, 11:33:56 AM

And built Travers Park.

Travers Park is a tiny playground that replaced a 9-hole golf course. A net loss of green space in an area sorely lacking in green space. Although my apartment building wouldn't be here, can you imagine if they had built a real park instead of selling the land to developers?

Yeah the tennis courts looked nice too. It is a shame what Queensboro did with all their land, the old photos are surreal.

Maybe speed bumps on 35th could detract some drivers speeding through to avoid Northern Blvd or Roosevelt.

I don't believe it is currently possible to average more than 15 mph on 35th Ave.