Community Board 5 members, at their meeting last week, show where new bike lanes will be implemented in Ridgewood and Glendale. Photo by Phil Corso
It is time to bring out the white paint.
Community Board 5 gave the go-ahead to new bike lanes in Ridgewood and Glendale along some of its busiest routes. The board’s 29-5 vote at the CB 5 meeting last Wednesday made way for the first phase of an ongoing debate over where the cyclists’ lanes should go, and the riders should be able to hit the pavement in their newly designated space this summer, officials said.
“This is a way to try and control where bicyclists will travel,” said Vinny Arcuri, Community Board 5 chairman.
That first phase included one set of parallel bike routes on Harman and Himrod streets from Evergreen Avenue on the south to Metropolitan Avenue on the north, and the other included routes on Woodward and Onderdonk avenues from Flushing Avenue on the west to Cooper Avenue on the east, according to John Maier, co-chair of the CB 5 Transportation Committee. Each route will not require any changes to existing parking or vehicle moving lanes, he said.
“These are sharrows that are going on there, which show basically the width of a bicycle,” Maier said. “They are recommendations to make bicyclists aware of where it is best for them to be and for cars to make them aware that bicyclists can be there.”
Community Board 5 residents initially asked the city Transportation Department to consider new bike lanes back in 2011. The City Planning Department responded with a bike-planning forum in 2013 and generated a proposed bicycle network with the community board’s help.
The final proposed routes were brought to the community board in November and included one route on Eliot Avenue through Mount Olivet Cemetery, which residents argued was too narrow to accommodate anymore bike traffic. The route was removed from the first phase proposal.
A spokesman for the DOT said the agency would continue to look at ways to consider a new bike lane along Eliot Avenue.
Moving forward, Maier said the city would be working with Community Board 5 to consider a second phase of bike lane proposals that could potentially branch out into Maspeth and Middle Village. Future routes on the City Planning proposal included new bike lanes along Grand Avenue, Fresh Pond Road and other major roads in western Queens.
Some members of the board said they worried about irresponsible bicyclists who could not only endanger themselves in the coming bike lanes, but could also put drivers at risk. Maier rebutted the concerns while defending the importance of bike lanes along busy routes in the borough.
“Just like you in a car, bicyclists need to get to places,” he said. “If you look at Metropolitan Avenue, it is a major route going east to west and people need to use that. We do not not build roads because drivers are bad drivers, just like we shouldn’t not have bicycle lanes because some bicyclists are bad bicyclists.”
By Phil Corso
