Jackson Heights Life

I highly recommend people watching these video for innovative ideas about parking. Pretty forward thinking and would be amazing to have Jackson Heights lead the way on ideas like this.

http://www.streetfilms.org/mba-the-right-price-for-parking/

http://www.streetfilms.org/mba-parking-reform/

http://www.streetfilms.org/moving-beyond-the-automobile/

a good article on parking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html

The book that I keep seeing referenced a lot pertaining to these issues:
http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Donald-Shoup/dp/1884829988

Discuss....

If you haven't seen the notices already, on Thursday morning 8/25 the traffic direction will change on 75th street. Begining Thursday the traffic will be southbound (rather than northbound right now) from 25th Avenue up to 37th Avenue. The rest will remain as is.

I just want to remind everyone to be careful in the first couple of weeks. There's always someone who didn't realise the change. I hope not to hear about any head on crashes or pedestrians getting knocked over.

Are they re-routing buses so they travel down 75th st? Where can i find out? And why the change? Was the community consulted on this?

Bike lanes on 74th and 75th Streets when you've got city buses running along both streets as well? Won't all the ambulances scraping the human speedbumps off the asphalt slow the neighborhood traffic down too?

Bus routes are changing September 4th!

The Q47 and Q49 will travel southbound on 75th Street from 35th Avenue to Roosevelt Avenue.  The Q47 will continue to use 73rd Street between 31st Avenue and 35th Avenue.

    Passing along a message-
 Residents of 75th street in Jackson Heights are hoppin mad at the recent street changes. Many of these homeowners are not on this
or other local sites and apparently did not see/hear of the proposed changes till shortly before they happened. Many of these residents
are not native English speakers and think they should have been contacted on a door-to-door basis for something as big as this. Those
homes are not the sturdiest and the steep pitch of the driveways (which flood basements often) are of concern for these homeowners
now with increased traffic. Danny Dromm is now persona non grata on 75th street. I suggest he or his assistants visit there very soon and talk on an individual basis and assure them this was thought out.
 And that going forward with changes that appear to go by consensus, we not rely on internet communication in a neighborhood that has so much diversity and so many members not online which makes communication just in English, and just online, an inaccurate method of working out neighborhood issues.
 More personal contact in gathering data, please.

This morning, after watching the intersection of 75th & 37th for a while and observing that all seemed to be working fine, I started composing in my head a message for this forum congratulating the neighborhood for allowing something good to happen without a lot of overwrought drama.  I never posted it, and now it looks like I missed my window of opportunity.

I think this change was clearly a home run for the neighborhood.   It will significantly benefit drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors alike who have suffered for years from the congestion on 73rd and 76th Streets.  And it will improve the commutes of riders on the Q49 bus (I'm not so sure about the Q47, but that's another story).  Mayor Bloomberg is to be commended for the continuing creativity and responsiveness of his Department of Transportation.  The Jackson Heights Neighborhood Transportation Study included a community involvement process that was unprecedented for our city, and would have been impressive even for a much smaller town.  The recommendation to reverse 75th Street came out of years of neighborhood advocacy.

I have no doubt that some people are hopping mad about the change.  How could it be otherwise in a neighborhood as large and diverse as ours?  But the idea that Danny Dromm is political trouble about this is silly.  Far more people, myself included, are grateful to him for his forward-looking stance on community livability and safety issues.

And anyway, what is the complaint here?  That the city recklessly and maliciously changed the view from their parked cars without sufficient prior notice?  If somebody has a real complaint, encourage them come here and tell the community what it is.  We welcome posts in other languages, so that should not be an obstacle.

I am unclear as to what people are hoppin mad about.  What are the complaints?

thanks.