Transportation
We must ensure that our neighborhoods are accessible, which means addressing transportation while addressing housing.
Transportation is what connects us to everything and everyone. And for millions of us, no matter how we get around, not a day goes by where the system does not fail us.
Sometimes, it means being late for work. But for far too many families, it means a funeral.
So the safety of our streets will always be a top priority of my office. We owe that much to the 25 pedestrians, 33 motorists, and 1 cyclist who lost their lives on our roads last year alone.
We are sick of hearing how Northern Boulevard has become the new Boulevard of Death. I’m tired of hearing excuses year after year about why the redesign of Queens Boulevard STILL isn’t done.
Enough is enough. Lives are on the line with every change of a traffic light. It’s time to reimagine how we get around our borough, and I’ve got some ideas.
We can transform our bike network into a borough-wide interconnected web for all our families to safely enjoy. This means engaging our cycling community, directing capital dollars to redesign our streets, and making the bicycle a legitimate mode of transportation, no matter what neighborhood you call home.
You should be able to ride from Forest Hills to the Flushing Bay Promenade or pedal from Glendale to Glen Oaks without fear. And for our cyclists who want to take in the views from the Queensboro Bridge, we’re just as excited as you are to see a bike lane in the works.
But we can still think bigger. Let’s encourage multi-modal transportation by building a network of bike storage hubs outside our subway stations.
Let’s bring scooter sharing to Queens, and especially the Rockaways, unlocking even more interest in our beaches and our businesses along the peninsula. Let’s speed up Citi Bike’s rollout across Queens. There’s no reason why Eastern Queens should be years behind the rest of the borough.
Let’s open more of our bridges to cyclists, establish a true Five- Borough Bikeway and make Queens even more accessible to those beyond our borders. For those who rely on mass transit, you deserve nothing less than an efficient, reliable commute.
But for Southeast Queens and Northeast Queens, and other transportation deserts across this borough, we have no idea what that even looks like. This is the administration that is commited to making fantasy a reality.
Our plan includes:
Busways along center medians with all-door boarding, speeding up commutes and making our commercial corridors more accessible, starting with Archer Avenue in Jamaica.
Going full-electric with our bus fleet.
Expand the Jamaica Bus Depot, so the MTA can better serve this borough for decades to come.
The complete overhaul of our archaic Queens Bus Network, originally planned before the pandemic, to better connect bus riders with the subways, our cultural institutions, and commercial hubs.
And MTA, yes, we need more community input in the planning process – true community input.
But while we’re talking rails, enough messing around with Southeast Queens. The Long Island Rail Road’s Atlantic Ticket program must be made permanent with a free subway transfer. We will accept nothing less.
Let us also demand that the Biden-Harris Administration allow us to proceed with congestion pricing, which has the potential to create a billion dollar revenue stream that would be a game changer for the MTA.
The possibilities for transportation improvements that could be funded by this revenue stream are endless. For our pedestrians, our streets belong as much to you as anyone else. It’s time our policies reflect that.
We must expand our Open Streets program. Together with the Department of Transportation, we will develop a plan that does not rely so heavily on community volunteers. As we expand, we must prioritize schools and communities lacking green space alike.
Let’s work with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and the Street Vendor Project to fast-track licenses for food vendors. If we’re going to be socially distancing from one another for the foreseeable future, let’s optimize these spaces the ways we know we can.
As the largest borough in New York, with a land area of one hundred nine square miles, we need safe and affordable transportation infrastructure that meets our needs down to the last mile. It’s about time we got what we deserved, so let’s get to work.