12 JANUARY 4, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDITORIAL
The cost of Queens Blvd. safety is worth it
There’s a great scene in the famed
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STORY:
City to seek $36.5 million in fi nes
from Queens-based car dealer Major
World for deceptive practices
SUMMARY:
The Department of Consumer
Aff airs (DCA) is now seeking $36.5
million in consumer restitution and
fi nes from the Queens-based car
dealer Major World.
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(subject: Queens Snaps).
play “Inherit the Wind,” a dramatization
of the Scopes monkey
trial, in which one of the lawyers tells
the jury, “Progress has never been a
bargain. You have to pay for it.”
He goes on to mention that the
advent of the telephone cost people
“privacy and the charm of distance”
and that air travel caused the birds
“to lose their wonder” and the clouds
“to smell of gasoline.”
In many respects, the idea that progress
doesn’t come for free can also be
said about Queens Boulevard. It was
once infamously called the “Boulevard
of Death” because of the many deadly
pedestrian and vehicular accidents
that plagued the seven-mile roadway
through the heart of our borough.
But now, things have changed for the
better.
It was, nearly two decades ago, a
12-lane speedway. Pedestrians took
their lives into their hands every time
they crossed it; they found themselves
in a race against time to get across the
wide roadway in the short time the
signals provided — an extraordinarily
risky task for seniors and young
children.
The city worked hard through three
diff erent administrations to change
things. The Giuliani and Bloomberg
years saw various changes to the
roadway, including the installation of
fences on the medians to discourage
jaywalkers; countdown clocks that
gave pedestrians more time to cross
the street; wider medians where they
could safely stop if they couldn’t cross
the whole road in time; and the removal
of traffi c lanes on the service roads
for extra parking.
That put a dent in the safety problems
on Queens Boulevard, but the
roadway still saw plenty of fatal
accidents involving pedestrians and
bicyclists. So the de Blasio administration
took two major steps: reducing the
boulevard’s speed limit from 30 to 25
mph, and introducing bike lanes on
the service roads.
A recent New York Times report
found that those measures proved
quite successful. As of Dec. 3, 2017,
there hadn’t been a single fatal
accident involving a pedestrian or
a bicyclist on Queens Boulevard in
three years.
The turnaround is remarkable, but
unappreciated by some who believe
Queens Boulevard is now too slow to
travel. There are concerns that the loss
of parking spots due to the bike lanes
will hurt local businesses.
Obviously, the city should investigate
those concerns and fi nd ways
to help local businesses make up
the diff erence. But we believe that
the various measures taken to make
Queens Boulevard safer over the last
two decades should not be reversed.
Drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists
alike mutually own and share the
road, and all of them deserve to travel
the boulevard without fear of injury
or death.
Slower speeds on Queens Boulevard
are the cost of progress made over the
last 20 years — but it’s a cost well worth
the trouble.
