In its normal fashion, BHCA claims that this common safety improvement actually decreases safety…without explaining how. It also claims that DoT is ignoring input from the community, when in fact it had multiple meetings at the Community Board and listened to feedback, which was more in favor of the safety improvements. In fact, it’s BHCA that is ignoring the actual community members and instead siding with drivers from other communities that think of Bayside as nothing more than a parking lot.
The Amenian Church of the Holy Martyrs’s actual petition has some odd claims in it:
It’s hard to understand how a single bike lane is so powerful that it already “prohibits worship” and “severally impacts our sacraments”. Bike lanes can do many things, but we’ve yet to hear of one that could end a religion.
Later in the petition it becomes more obvious that, “the new bike lanes have created substantial hardship” because, “parishioners travel weekly to Holy Martyrs Armenian Church from all five boroughs of New York City – Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn – and Long Island and New Jersey.” That actually seems like an understatement, since according to the map in their petition (above) only 62% of petition signers live anywhere near New York City at all. We do wonder where the other 38% of signatures come from, driving multiple hours weekly to come to this church. Or maybe many signatures are just people who dislike cyclists as part of a culture war and don’t actually visit this area very often.
If the church itself is admitting (and showing evidence) that their opposition to the bike lane is largely coming from outside the neighborhood, then it’s surprising that Bayside Hills Civic Association isn’t calling out the outsiders trying to dictate what happens in our community. Especially since we know the people using the bike lanes are largely local neighbors taking short trips.
Where are the cyclists who use this bike lane going? This bike lane is one of very few that crosses the Long Island Expressway (495), a devastating highway that separates communities, generates massive pollution, and helps Long Islanders jet by our neighborhood.
Why would cyclists want to cross 495? Immediately south of the highway is Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School 74. On the other side of the street is Cunningham Park, which has many attractions including an amazing network of free mountain biking trails.
Worse yet, the bike lane that “have created substantial hardship” isn’t even in front of Amenian Church of the Holy Martyrs. There is not now, and has never been a bike lane in front of the church. There are other lane around, but due to the highway widening project, the lane hasn’t been put in front of the church yet.
In addition, the church itself removed parking in front of it decades ago. We support that move, but it’s interesting that Bayside Hills Civic Association only fights the removal of parking when it benefits kids cycling, and not when it benefits the elderly going to their church.
The petition hates these “unnecessary bike lanes” and many in the comments say that they are rarely used. Yet the church itself only has a few masses a week while many cyclists use this route every day. If the signatures want to remove underutilized spaces, they should look at the log in their eye before worrying about 3 feet in the street.
We have nothing against the Amenian Church of the Holy Martyrs. We understand their history in the community, even if most of their parishioners have left our neighborhood. Many of our members have enjoyed going to their festival, which in previous years has closed off Oceania Street to all cars. And we understand that they care about the kids that go to their private, religious school, which is appears to be on 210th Street, which is a block away from any bike lane. We just ask that as this community travels long distances to worships together, that they don’t put our neighborhood kids at risk by removing the only street safety they have to get to school or to the park.
Eastern Queens Greenway 
curious who you are. Are you part of East Coast Greenway? The only data i am aware of regarding bike riders are US Census journey to work; that national transportation survey which i think is done annually; strava, which needs lots of processing to tease out possible bikes; nyc citibike stats and google pings, which similar to strava need lots of processing and are estimates only. Do you know of other data sources that are accessible? If you have subscriptions to Streetlights or Inrix, i think they can also model bikes.
And, as you alluded to, just counting or modeling current bikes does not identify unmet demand. Surveys were just done by Parks and DOT, which might address demand. I dont remember.
interesting that you have requested bike counters. I didnt know there was such a thing.
nevertheless, i still dont get the 53 ave/oceania choice for bike lanes. Especially 53 ave seems like overkill, since the street is so wide and has low traffic volume, you can easily ride there without all that infrastructure. Speed bumps to slow down traffic seem like they would be enough. And lots of education on all sides. You know that in Amsterdam kids get a rigorous and serious education in safe riding in school.
just to mention also, if the route to main and roosevelt is meant to follow kissena corridor park, i prob wouldnt use it, sInce it would head south before heading north, and thus would be longer. Possibly would use it at night, but the connecting bike lanes on Kissena blvd are usually obstructed by parked vehicles, which is actually more dangerous to navigate cause you have to weave in and out instead ridIng a predictable straight line. As you no doubt know.
that settles it. We just have to knock it all down and start from scratch!
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Here is an example of a bike counter used successfully in another area of NYC
There is census data, but that only looks at your primary mode of transportation. Since so many people in Eastern Queens commute to Manhattan, it would under-count by quite a bit. Census data (or more likely American Community Survey data) could give a good baseline of all the people who couldn’t drive due to demographics (like age) but you’d need direct survey data to identify the neighbors who don’t drive because they don’t want to or due to medical/financial situation.
There is Strava and Citibike data, but you need to prove that you’re a researcher to use it (and there are no Citibikes out here). I haven’t heard of google or apple releasing the location data they track on us. As a neighborhood volunteer organization, we don’t have access to things like Streetlights or Inrix.
On the NYC data portal there is an NYPD record of crashes. It’s not great information and dramatically under counts, but it gives some relative data. Looking at that in comparison to our low density could be interesting. But more importantly looking at things like injuries wider vs. narrower roads would be useful. Once of the biggest improvements on 53rd and Oceania is the “road diet” that makes it harder to speed but just as easy to drive legally.
With only measuring from maps data we could see how many square feet are dedicated to bikes vs. cars in our neighborhood. We are very confident that integrating that data with a bike/car count would show that there is far less infrastructure per cyclist than there is per driver.
The key thing about all of this isn’t specifically about you or me; a strong adult cyclist can manage most traffic conditions. Routes like 53rd or Oceania or the route to Main Street is all about creating a safe network for everyone, including people that are not strong adult cyclists. The safer, more connected, and more common the infrastructure is, the more people who will be able to use it. People who are not confident cyclists still deserve protected routes to get across their neighborhood.
Even if you never use any of those routes, when other people do it shows our politicians how important good infrastructure is, and then they’ll be more likely to put in roads that helps you specifically. Creating a community of cyclists will get the drivers out of the bike lanes on Kissena Boulevard that are getting in your way (because they’re currently unprotected lanes). You may have been able to ride on 53rd without any lanes, but MANY people couldn’t and now they are riding on them since they were given protected lanes. Ride on them sometime and start chatting with people; these few lanes have already made a difference for many people in the community, just not the people that get listed to at CB meetings.
Instead of questioning if 53rd and Oceania seem like overkill for bike lanes, why not question if they’re overkill for car lanes? Do we need 50 feet wide streets for the tiny amount of car traffic we have in Eastern Queens vs. actually busy parts of the City? If you don’t like those lanes, then what lanes will you advocate for at the Community Board?
Their kids of Amsterdam do have more education, but much more importantly they have safe infrastructure for them. Protected lanes like 53rd and Oceania are a direct result of the designs done in Amsterdam to protect their kids. The only way Amsterdam got their kids riding is by local groups changing their streets to “stop the child murder” by drivers.
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excuse me, i thought you said i hated bikers. i see that you just said i dont like them. see how the brain works?
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Actually we didn’t even say that you don’t like cyclists, we don’t know you or how you feel. We said it’s not good to erase people if you don’t like them. That’s been a major problem in interactions with people like Councilmember Paladino.
This is why we don’t spend a lot of time on social media, we can’t stand the culture war that leads to things like that petition. We spend a lot of time writing long form articles that break down real points, not just shouting about vibes. We’d rather hype up local bike rides so real community members can partner with each other to make things better.
As part of our advocacy for a safe route to Main Street, we’ve specifically asked for a bike counter. We’re asking for it in the Kissena Corridor Park section, since right now there is no infrastructure there so there are very few cyclists. (Sections like the Kissena Park area already have a lot of cyclists). Having a counter there to show the number grow every year would give us good data for other projects.
We whole wholeheartedly agree that there should be more data in this discussion. If you pull together some analytics then we can talk about publishing it. There is a lot of information about low car usage in our area as a percentage of streets vs. other parts of NYC that have more bike lanes than we do (if they can do it, why can’t we?). Or it would be interesting to show the large percentage of people in our areas who don’t drive for a variety of reasons (children, elderly, disabled, poor, those who choose not to). If you look at street space for cyclists vs. # of cyclists in comparison to street use for drivers vs. the number of drivers, we’d see that cycling infrastructure is well under-represented by the population. There is a lot of data that no one has put the effort into analyzing. Instead there is a dominate voice that “everyone here drives” and if we look at the data that’s clearly not true.
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so there are many people using the bikelane every day? They must be riding in the middle of the night. Or perhaps they are wearing invisibility cloaks. We need cameras starting next May, through October to document use of the bike lanes on Oceana and 53 Ave. I live one block over from 53 Ave, and cross 53 Ave regularly. Since they were installed, i have seen 9 bike riders on the lanes on 53 Ave. Yes i have been counting. I thought bike traffic would pick up over the summer, but it didnt. There was, however, one old man on a tiny bike going eastbound in the westbound lanes, where he was less likely to seen by drivers looking the other way while crossing the street, putting himself in danger. No helmet of course. I am on Oceana infrequently, but I have been the only bike rider i have ever seen on Oceana’s bike lanes. I am familiar with the Armenian Church. Yes, their parishioners have moved away from Queens and yes they travel back for services and events, although some people seem to find that hard to believe. The school teaches the Armenian language and the parish commemorates the Armenian genocide each year; they are a strongly-bound group. Also, i’m not clear on how the bike lane helps anyone cross the LIE. you still have to wait for the lights and cross Horace Harding the same way as always. Unless it’s got to do with turning movements. If the LIE is your main concern, DOT could just put a protected bike lane across the LIE without extending it so far north. It would be good to keep it by the middle school because of all the double parking at the school. But otherwise, so far i haven’t seen evidence that it has become a valuable asset. Would love to see video proving me wrong
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Should we remove traffic lanes on streets with low car usage, like on 210th street? You could hang out there for a while without seeing a driver. Or is it just OK to create violent situations if it’s against a minority of people?
There are a lot of cyclists in the area, trying to erase a people isn’t reasonable just because you don’t like them. There may not be many cyclists on Oceania right now due to the construction on the bridge and all the cars parked in the bike lane (let alone the missing bike lane in front of the church and across the street). Infrastructure isn’t safe unless it’s consistent. But once something is established and the neighborhood learns about it, it gets popular. Look at the all the cyclists on Joe Michaels Mile.
It’s unrealistic to imagine thousands of cyclists using a lane as soon as it’s built. We didn’t have thousands of drivers appears right after concrete road appeared. This take time. By all counts the number of cyclists is growing.
The bigger concern is why is there a petition against the safety of kids getting around the neighborhood before they’re of driving age? An honest look on 53rd (which has less obstacles) will see some of these kids. We’ve seen a group of over 12 riders in front of the church last Friday itself.
But to your larger point, if we set up a camera that shows the weekly number of cyclists every week next summer is more than the congregation of the church, then world you advocate removing the church since it isn’t utilized enough?
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my main concern was the lack of data either way. we can all yell about our impressions of what’s going on, or we can do some rational planning. I am an avid and regular bike rider. I would love a bike lane from bayside to the flushing main street train station. every time i ride there and back, which is several times each week, I fear more and more that i will end up under the wheels of a vehicle due to increasing mayhem on the roads and increasing potholes. I don’t know where you got the idea that I “hate” bike riders. Or drivers. I am one of them too. And I am also a pedestrian. Everyone is busy shouting. It’s ridiculous. As for community input, if there is an important issue, some advocate, say East Coast Greenway, can host a targeted meeting in partnership with the city agency in question, say DOT, and make sure to get representation from all potential friends and foes, make a presentation with a well-described statement of need, provide concept drawings, perhaps have an actual charrette, with maps and data and markers and white boards, and get something real, not just an agenda item on a random community board meeting. CB meetings are so poorly understood that some people call them “secret” meetings. Let’s get your social media chops going and get some real planning done.
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We aren’t looking to shout at anyone. Members of the church are trying to remove some of the very few pieces of safety infrastructure for our kids. We’re not yelling, just pointing out the logical and moral problems with their argument.
We agree with you that there should be a safe route to get to Main Street. We’ve spent over a decade advocating for that and successfully got $43 million dedicated to it. If you’d like to see it done quicker, contact Councilmember Ung and Lee and talk to them about neighborhood priorities. They need to hear from people like you who want our community built.
If you want a safe ride to Main Street, then we’re surprised you’re advocating “DOT could just put a protected bike lane across the LIE without extending it so far north”. You know that inconsistently safe infrastructure isn’t good for kids. No driver would accept safe passage over the bridge if it only led to a mud road on the other side. Everyone deserves a network so they can get to wherever they’re going.
You’re right that the Community Boards are a huge problem. We’ve successfully advocated for CB reforms, including term limits, which were approved but now we need to wait for them to come into effect. The entire CB process is broken, it’s not representational of the community and gives too much power to the a very small number of people who often don’t have the best intentions or information. But it is the process that the DoT brings their concept drawings to and eventually listens to. This is very different than the NYPD and FDNY don’t let the CB veto their plans.
If you’d like the East Cost Greenway to come out here, then invite them. We think they do amazing work and would love for them to include a route from Manhattan to Long Island. But all of this takes effort. It take a lot of effort to build something for the community, especially when so many people, like this petition, just want to throw stones.
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