Building Resilient Streets in Queens, New York City
By: Debs Schrimmer (Senior Manager, Future of Cities) and Thomas DeVito (Transit, Bikes, and Scooter Policy Manager)
COVID-19 has left an indelible mark on New York City and has created an inflection point for its transportation system. At the peak of the pandemic, New York City bus ridership declined 80% and subway ridership declined by 90%. While the MTA is doubling down on measures to disinfect and keep the transit system clean, and there’s emerging evidence that the transit system was likely never a major transmitter for the virus in the first place, thousands of people are still reconsidering their transportation options.
As New York begins moving into Phase 3 of economic reopening, early signs suggest a future of gridlocked streets with cars. In every borough outside Manhattan, vehicle miles traveled are quickly rebounding, and some New Yorkers are buying cars for the first time. The New York State D.M.V has processed 18% more car registrations in June-July 2020 across the five boroughs compared to the same time period last year.
At the same time, biking has boomed as a socially distant form of transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bike shops are experiencing shortages of bikes, and bikeshare grew 67% during the beginning of lockdown. Citi Bike has become a means for tens-of-thousands of critical workers to continue getting to work, and a tool for protest and public expression. So far this year, the Citi Bike system has nearly 500,000 new riders trying out bikeshare — including an all-time record for daily rides and a record high ridership of female members.
It’s more important than ever for New York City to encourage sustainable transportation, and to make its streets a safe place for everyone using them.
In partnership with Sam Schwartz Engineering and Street Plans, we looked at how street design could further encourage New Yorkers to take more trips on foot and bikes.
Reimagining Our Streets
Before the pandemic, nearly 67% or 3.2 million commute trips in NYC were made on transit, foot, or bike every day (2.8 million by transit and 400,000 by biking or walking). Given this, public transit can and must continue to be the backbone of New York City’s transportation networks.
But with no vaccine in place yet and social distancing being widely practiced, transit simply will not be able to move as many people as compared to pre-pandemic times. At the same time, NYC streets cannot handle a potential influx of former transit riders turning to car ownership and driving alone. Our streets need to be redesigned to make it safe and comfortable for walking and biking.
To better understand the experiences of people living, commuting, working, and owning businesses along the corridors, Citi Bike hosted a design charrette and workshop with local groups. During the workshop, Ciclistas Latinoamericanos de Nueva York, Urban Upbound, Riders Alliance, Court Square Civic Association, WeBike NYC, Transportation Alternatives, Bike New York, Make Queens Safer, Queens Bike, and the 34th Avenue Coalition shared feedback on what local community needs and their ideas for the street corridors.
The workshop acknowledged some important steps NYCDOT has already taken first steps in providing improvements along Crescent Street and Northern Boulevard, like committing to the construction of bike lanes on both corridors with temporary materials. However, it was agreed that further action to build out these corridors with more permanent designs and materials is needed to strengthen their appeal to people riding bikes in the long term.
The hypothetical corridors we looked at span western and central Queens. We focused on 34th Avenue, Broadway, and Northern Boulevard, which connects multiple, highly dense and diverse communities to major commercial areas and links into Manhattan. We also looked at Crescent Street, a popular connector to the Queensboro Bridge, which is experiencing major bicycle crowding issues. Finally, we looked at a corridor along 31st Avenue, which could provide a key connector between multiple neighborhoods in Queens.
Northern Boulevard at 54th Street and Broadway (Woodside, Queens)
Northern Boulevard is often referred to as the “new boulevard of death” due to its unsafe conditions. How might Northern Boulevard be redesigned to better support the community and provide sustainable transportation options?
Through workshops with local community groups, the following street design and infrastructure elements were proposed:
- Convert to pedestrian plaza with additional landscaping with movable seating, benches, trees, bike racks etc., flexible space for food truck dock
- Add bus stop shelters for Q18 and Q66 bus riders
- Add two-way protected bike lanes along Northern Boulevard and Broadway, linking to 34th Avenue; directional protected bike lanes along Broadway west of the Northern Boulevard
- Add dedicated bus lanes along Broadway and Northern Boulevard, as well as bus boarding islands to support addition Select Bus Service
- Improve MTA Northern Boulevard station access by adding a Citi Bike Station on the corner of Northern Boulevard and 54th street
- Convert 54th Street into a shared, curbless design south of Northern Boulevard, and the addition of a large curb on 54th Street north of Northern Boulevard.
34th Avenue at 78th Street and Travers Park (Jackson Heights, Queens)
34th Avenue is part of the city’s Open Streets program, and has largely been considered a major success. The long thoroughfare has proven to be highly useful for both leisure activities, as well as safe bike commuting.
While learning about the community’s experience with 34th Avenue as an Open Street, there was lots of enthusiasm to make the temporary road closure a more permanent solution. To make this happen, we heard many proposals for 34th Avenue:
- Adapt 34th Ave into a permanent Open Street by extending Travers Park across 78th using curb “shared street” design elements, maintaining street access for emergency vehicles, deliveries, food carts/trucks, local resident parking, and biking only.
- Convert the eastbound lane into a two-way neighborhood greenway for cyclists.
- Convert some parallel on-street parking to a Citi Bike station.
- Include a raised pedestrian crosswalk helping mobility for those with disabilities, strollers, etc.
- Divert thru westbound traffic with planters/signs to southbound 78th Street.
- Convert westbound lane to public space for walking/social activity, exercise classes, and other outdoor gathering space; flexible curbside allows for some food trucks/carts and other non-vehicular uses (bike parking, landscaping, seating, community garden space, etc.)
- Expand movable public seating within Travers Park, servicing food cart/truck patrons and other park users.
- Maintain median landscaping with intermediate breaks for pedestrian permeability.
Resilient Street Corridors: Queens Case Study
Next, we studied the potential socioeconomic, mode shift, and environmental impacts of street design changes along the hypothetical corridor. The corridor spanned the neighborhoods of Corona, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City, Hunters Point, Ravenswood, and Astoria.
The analysis considered both a “No Action” scenario, where the corridor remained unchanged, and a “Resilient Streets” scenario, where the streets along the corridor were enhanced with street design and infrastructure changes proposed in the workshop — including protected biking and walking facilities, and additional select bus service.
When comparing the No Action scenario to the Resilient Streets scenario, the Resilient Streets scenario uses space more efficiently to serve more people. They have the potential to accommodate 69,000 walking and biking trips, expanding transportation access for nearly 80,000 low-income households within one-mile of the corridors.
Local Community Demographics
540,000 Queens residents live within a mile of the hypothetical “Resilient Street” corridors. These residents are:
Transit dependent: There are 111,000 zero-car households and about 69% of commuters rely on public transit to get to work.
Mixed income: There are a range of income levels along the corridor, including 78,000 low-income households that may not have options to increase transportation spending and depend on access to affordable transportation options. The corridor also serves 15,741 residents living in New York City Housing Authority’s affordable housing facilities, including Ravenswood, Robbins Plaza, Holmes Towers, Isaacs, Astoria, Queensbridge North, and Queensbridge South.
Racially Diverse: Central and western Queens is very multicultural, with a large and vibrant immigrant population. According to the Census’ American Community Survey data, 23% of residents identify as Asian, 46% of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, 20% identify as some other race, 5% identify as Black, and 3% identify as two or more races. One particular neighborhood, Jackson Heights, is considered one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States. It has large Ecuadorian, Dominican, Mexican, Bangladeshi, Colombian, Peruvian, Chinese, and Indian populations.
Essential workers: 185,000 people work in education, healthcare, warehousing, transportation, and utilities industries, which represents about 61% of total workers in the study area.
Findings and Impact
Looking at the corridor’s current commute characteristics, and given the impact of COVID-19 on transit ridership, Sam Schwartz Engineering estimates at least 58,000 of the morning Queens commuters who previously relied on the 7, E, F, M, R, N, W lines, as well as the M60, Q100, Q60, and Q32 routes have begun or will be looking for new transportation options as New York City reopens and more daily travel resumes.
If no action is taken and streets remain as they are today (a “no build” scenario), Sam Schwartz Engineering’s analysis finds that only 3,000 of these displaced transit riders — 6% of total transit riders along the corridor — would find walking or biking to be a safe, convenient, and comfortable enough option to use them for their commute. This could potentially add tens of thousands of single occupancy vehicle daily trips to the transportation network.
The Sam Schwartz Engineering team then looked at the “Resilient Streets” scenario, which took into account a range of street design and infrastructure changes along the corridor to help support walking and biking — including new protected bike lane infrastructure, as well as the launch of ebikes and the expansion of Citi Bike into Queens, which will help expand bikeshare availability.
Adding “Resilient Street” infrastructure and design changes along the corridors in western and central Queens would generate demand and provide safe facilities for 55,000 daily bike trips and 14,000 walking trips daily. These 69,000 daily sustainable biking and walking trips would save 290,000 vehicle miles traveled daily and remove 31,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Resilient Streets are the Future
As the City thinks about the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on its transportation network, especially with the potential of thousands of former transit riders looking for new options, the City will need to take bold actions to provide sustainable transportation options for pre-COVID-19 transit users.
The City has taken some important steps like the creation of its Open Streets program. However, effort needs to be put into building out the current Open Streets program into something more long term: streets that don’t just allow for social distancing while walking and biking around a neighborhood, but networked streets that also allow for quick and safe transportation between neighborhoods.
We urge the City to become a champion of resilient streets, which can provide design solutions that support near-term needs for walking and biking but also the ability to adapt and evolve as transit riders return to public transit in the future.
