Streetsblog New York City

In front of an audience of about 60 residents at I.S. 145 last night, city representatives and advocates answered questions about traffic safety in Jackson Heights. The forum was held in the wake of the death of 11-year-old I.S. 145 student Miguel Torres, who was run over by a dump truck driver at Northern Boulevard and 80th Street while crossing with the light.

115th Precinct commanding officer Michael Michael A. Cody speaks at Tuesday night's forum. Photo: Stephen Miller

“It broke my heart when I had to see the mother on the corner of 80th Street, hysterical because she had lost her 11-year-old son,” Council Member Daniel Dromm said. “The urgency to have this kind of forum became even more apparent.”

Organized by Dromm, the Jackson Heights Green Alliance, and Transportation Alternatives, the forum featured the council member, DOT Queens Borough Deputy Commissioner Dalila Hall, TA’s Ya-Ting Liu, and Deputy Inspector Michael A. Cody, commanding officer of NYPD’s 115th Precinct.

“Speeding, unequivocally, is the number one cause of traffic deaths in New York City,” far outpacing distracted driving, alcohol and illegal drugs, Liu said as the meeting began.

Deputy Inspector Cody, who started at the 115th Precinct six weeks ago, said the precinct has issued 39 speeding tickets so far this year. That’s on par with last year, when it issued 177 speeding tickets — about one every other day. By comparison, the precinct issued 1,090 tickets for tinted windows in 2012.

The department’s current lack of attention to speeding stands in contrast with how Cody spoke about intoxicated drivers. “A lot of times when I was a young officer, DWI was not considered a fashionable arrest,” he said. “We’ve come a long way … it’s a key part of our crime-fighting strategy.”

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A group of business owners who decried the 37th Road pedestrian plaza in Jackson Heights after it opened have come around and launched a group to act as stewards of the new public space. This turn of events comes after persistent work by Council Member Danny Dromm’s office and local merchants, who are now working together to ensure the plaza is a long-term success. The plaza’s undeniable popularity as a gathering place also hasn’t hurt.

Business owners and Council Member Daniel Dromm announced the creation of a group to maintain the new Jackson Heights pedestrian plaza last Friday. Photo: Times Ledger

A few months ago, Internet Café owner Agha Saleh and Bombay Chat café owner Shazia Kausar were two of the business owners unhappy with the new plaza. Saleh was quoted in the New York Times saying that it had contributed to crime in the neighborhood, while Kausar told the Times Ledger that soon after the plaza opened in October 2011, her business had dropped and she was having trouble paying employees.

Citing a “gap of communication” between business owners, DOT, and plaza supporters when the project was implemented, Saleh credited months of work by Dromm’s office and DOT to address the business owners’ concerns. “We’re really proud that we brought people on board,” Saleh said.

Now, Saleh and Kausar are working with adjacent business owners to create a new group called Sukhi NY, which will manage what is being called Diversity Plaza. “Sukhi” is an acronym for Social Uplift Knowledge and Hope Initiatives; it also translates from Urdu, Hindi and other languages as “prosperity and happiness.” Council Member Dromm, whose office had until now been coordinating plaza upkeep, joined Saleh and Kausar at an event on the plaza last Friday to announce the formation of Sukhi NY, which is still in its formative stages. Official approval by DOT as a plaza partner is expected to come in September. In the meantime, the organization is kicking off its stewardship of the plaza by hosting a festival that ends today, marking the end of Muslim holy month Ramadan.

“This plaza can benefit the stakeholders who depend on this place for their livelihood,” Saleh said.

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Congressman Joe Crowley and City Council Member Daniel Dromm hold up t-shirts from Transportation Alternatives' Rider Rebellion campaign for better transit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Elmhurst’s elected officials voiced support for transit investment at a town hall hosted by Congressman Joe Crowley and Council Member Daniel Dromm last night.

A group of politicians including the two hosts, State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, and Assembly Members Grace Meng and Francisco Moya called for reopening Elmhurst’s Long Island Railroad Station, shuttered in 1985 due to low ridership. And to help bus and subway riders across the city, Elmhurst’s reps said the state would need to find new, dedicated revenue for transit.

Underlying the entire evening discussion was Elmhurst’s explosive population growth, fed by a vibrant immigrant community. The population of Elmhurst and the surrounding neighborhoods of Corona, East Elmhurst and Jackson Heights grew 40 percent between 1980 and 2010, and many believe recent estimates for the area are too low. “Elmhurst continues to grow and multiply,” said Crowley, “but we have still been limited to the same modes of transportation.”

Residents complained of crowded buses and leaky subway stations, demanding more investment in their neighborhood. Just under half of subway riders interviewed by Transportation Alternatives at a nearby station said they had a one-way commute of 45 minutes or more.

Crowley, who also serves as head of the Queens Democratic Party, said that more and better transit has to be part of the solution for the neighborhood. “It’s about more livable communities, places that provide access to people,” he said. “It’s about finding smarter ways to move people about.”

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Planters installed last week are adding a little bit of color to the 37th Road pedestrian plaza in Jackson Heights. Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

A package of enhancements and adjustments to the new pedestrian plaza on 37th Road in Jackson Heights — the object of a high-profile backlash from a group of local merchants this winter — is winning over some of the skeptics.

DOT has placed new planters and seating to spruce up the plaza and give it more color, while also adding parking and loading spaces and reversing the direction of traffic on a nearby block to improve access to the plaza, allaying some of the merchants’ fears.

The larger package of transportation changes related to the plaza had shown impressive benefits — shaving seven minutes off of local bus trips — and the new public space was already widely used. But recent tweaks have helped build a stronger consensus around the plaza, which proved to be the most controversial element of the plan.

City Council Member Daniel Dromm is a plaza supporter and has used his discretionary funds to pay for its upkeep. ”DOT has stepped up to the plate,” he said of the dozen or so planters that arrived in the plaza last Thursday. “The place is looking much more attractive.”

More street furniture is set to be delivered this Friday, when tables and chairs will be delivered at the request of two local restaurant owners. Those business owners, who had previously aligned with the merchants leading the fight against the plaza, have disassociated from the opposition. “They have grown to see the benefits to their restaurants,” said Dromm.

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Full seating in the new Jackson Heights plaza last fall. One merchant opposed to the project told a local paper that the plaza is "like a ghost town." Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

Earlier this month you might have noticed a few press accounts about merchants in Jackson Heights who think a new public plaza on one short block of 37th Road is crimping their bottom line. The plaza is actually part of a much broader plan to improve street safety, speed bus trips, and reduce traffic congestion in Jackson Heights, which neighborhood groups and NYC DOT have been working on for years without receiving much media attention. Now that there’s a tinge of conflict, the press is all over it — an innovative and community-driven transportation project has turned into a story about shopkeepers upset over the removal of 20 parking spaces.

The plaza reclaimed the block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street. Before the plaza, traffic on that block degraded the neighborhood street network. Drivers turning left onto 37th Road used to cause traffic to back up on 73rd Street and beyond, causing epic fits of horn-honking. Buses routed onto the block more than a decade ago to make way for the construction of the 74th Street transit hub had to make a series of zigzagging turns, slowing down more than 10,000 bus riders every weekday. When the proposal to re-route the buses and take traffic off the block came before the local community board, the vote in favor was unanimous.

“The objective was to get that traffic to move more smoothly and reduce that honking,” said Council Member Daniel Dromm, who has championed the changes and shepherded the project through to completion. Now Q47 and Q49 buses make one turn instead of three, and Dromm says bus drivers have told him they save seven minutes on each trip compared to the old route.

Merchants knew about the changes well in advance and most of the neighborhood’s business groups were supportive, said Dromm. After the plaza installation last fall, complaints began to surface about the loss of parking. But the parking loss — 20 spaces, according to one plaza opponent — is insignificant compared to the foot traffic that could be drawn to a well-run public space. Not only is Jackson Heights compact, walkable, and full of pedestrian traffic, but it has the least amount of park space per capita of any neighborhood in the city. The plaza is also right next to the 74th Street subway station, which sees more than 40,000 boardings on a typical weekday.

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Jackson Heights’ 78th Street Play Street, a summertime street closure won in last year’s best feel-good story of grassroots activism, has been expanded from two months of car-free space to three this year. If all goes well in September, when the school year has started, some sort of year-round street closure should be in the works for the kids of Jackson Heights.

“We’re on track to reforming the way that whole piece of street works,” said Donovan Finn, a member of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance. Both the Department of Transportation and City Council Member Daniel Dromm are “pretty solidly on board” with making some sort of big change in the next year or so should all go well this summer, Finn reported.

By extending the play street through September — last year, the block of 78th adjacent to Travers Park was closed 24/7 in July and August — neighborhood residents and city officials will be able to see how it works when school is in session. The private Garden School uses the street both to access its five-space parking garage and for loading and unloading school buses. “That’s actually the only use that faces the street,” said Finn.

DOT and Dromm specifically requested that the play street be extended into September in order to test out how the school would make a year-round closure work, whether full- or part-time.

We’ll see what happens in September, but so far the play street is again wildly popular in the open space-starved neighborhood. “Within 20 minutes of having it closed, there were kids out there running around,” said Finn. Once amenities like picnic tables, umbrellas, and astroturf are brought out, he said, residents will be able to use the new public space in even more ways.

Back in 2008, Jackson Heights residents banded together to win car-free Sundays on 78th Street, creating a new, temporary public space for children and families in one of NYC’s most park-starved neighborhoods. This year neighborhood activists aimed much higher: They wanted to make the street car-free 24-7 for the entire months of July and August.

As you’ll see, thanks to committed volunteers and strong leadership from District 25 Council Member Daniel Dromm, they overcame initial hesitation from the local community board’s transportation committee — which voted the idea down — to make it happen.

The fight was worth it, Dromm told us. “It was recognized just about two weeks ago in The Queens Tribune as being one of the best things about Queens – this play street,” he said. “So imagine if we hadn’t done it?” Indeed. We hope other electeds are in tune with their neighborhoods as much as Council Member Dromm.

All summer long, 78th Street was filled with a warm, family atmosphere, sometimes well after sundown. As for next year, there’s talk of possibly giving this car-free street even greater permanence.  Stay tuned.