![]() ![]() Above those stores and restaurants could be new apartments, in tall buildings appropriately sized for the unusually wide street. Coming out of the subways, they could stay on Queens Boulevard, and their greater numbers and the wider sidewalks would create a place for stores, restaurants, and cafés to flourish. The result is that more than 60 feet on each side of the boulevard becomes a place where pedestrians are comfortable. Next to the traffic lanes are protected bicycle planes, planted with permeable pavement which makes the trees part of a natural stormwater management system at the same time that it gives the roots room to grow. The wider sidewalks make the side lanes narrower, so that they become slow lanes where cars have to share the space with cyclists and pedestrians. The two After images, made for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, began with visions of streets and wider sidewalks. Plus, even though there usually aren’t a lot of pedestrians on Queens Boulevard, the sidewalks can be so narrow that they become congested. Compared to the European streets, Queens Boulevard is barren, and the cars on the wide side lanes go as fast as the cars in the center. What makes those wide, heavily trafficked streets different from Queens Boulevard? Two of the most important differences are the grand allées of majestic street trees and the fact that the side lanes in Europe are designed to be places where pedestrians want to be. But in Europe, “multi-way boulevards” (boulevards with separate side lanes like the ones on Queens Boulevard) are some of the great streets in the great cities, like the Champs Elysées and the Avenue Montaigne in Paris, or the Gran Via or the Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona. The most obvious reasons for that are the 12 lanes of parking and traffic, with lots of pavement and few trees. Even the main shopping is one block away from the boulevard in some locations. You can see in the “Before” photo above that the market has clearly said over the years that housing away from the artery (even just half a block away) is more desirable for most than being right on the boulevard. With a new 25 mile per hour speed limit and New York City’s new Vision Zero policies, Queens Boulevard is in a position to become dramatically different-and it may become one of the best places for the DeBlasio administration’s to zone for some of the affordable housing it wants to see. But it’s also the central artery of Queens, with five subway lines that run underneath it and a number of bus lines that run along it or across it, and in some stretches the Long Island Railroad is nearby. Sixty percent of the traffic fatalities in New York happen on ten percent of the streets, and Queens Boulevard is one of the two or three most dangerous of those. QUEENS BOULEVARD is one of the most dangerous streets in New York City. Massengale & Co LLC and Urban Advantage for Transportation AlternativesĬlick on any of the images to see a larger version Before & After, looking southeast from 67th Road.
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