Our team has spent almost 20 years advocating for a family-safe path connecting the parks of Eastern Queens. We focused on creating a safe connector through our parkland to avoid fights over street use, following a design that Robert Moses laid out but never completed. We’ve made some progress, but we’re looking forward to more big wins as times goes by.

We’ve met with every local politician who would talk to us; years ago we received public support from Nily Rozic, Peter Koo, Barry Grodenchik, Toby Ann Stavisky, Edward Braunstein, Paul Vallone, and John C. Liu. We advocated to Parks until they developed the Destination:Greenways! plan, and then we got dozens of community members to go to the planning meetings so the project is designed around community needs. Sandra Ung has come through with the funding, multiple times, for a total of over $43 million dedicated to this project so far. Donovan Richards has stepped in to push Parks on the bridge connecting to Flushing Meadows Park. We have worked tirelessly with our elected officials to pull together an amazing amount of support for a project designed to create no real opposition.

With all of this work from our amazing community over the years, we wanted to start off 2026 with an update for every section of the project (as identified by Parks Department funding segments).

Flushing Meadows/Corona Park

The new Lake Creek Overlook (section 2 on Destination:Greenways!) is funded and already 80% through its design phase! This will bring a beautiful overlook to a mainly forgotten part of the park under the Van Wyck Expressway, just south of the Long Island Expressway. Activating this section will really help provide better parkland, especially for the residents of Flushing.

Unlike the Lake Creek Overlook, the bike paths around the Lake and through the Promenade (sections 1 and 3) are not yet funded. We understand that there is existing infrastructure there; there are paths for cyclists and pedestrians (though with quite a few bumps from tree roots). But we will still advocate for these (very cheap) projects to increase way-finding and decrease some of the confusion for pedestrians and cyclists traveling through the parkland.

Botanical Gardens

We have heard that the Department of Transportation is working to create a safe route around the Botanical Gardens (section 4a). The original path ran through the Gardens, but when they started charging admission fees, we needed to find an alternative route. Since the Gardens has fenced in the parkland, the greenway will have to travel along the streets north or south of the park, making this section a Department of Transportation project, not a Parks Department project.

The key thing missing from the plan is how to cross College Point Boulevard safely (at the west side of the Botanical Gardens). At grade crossings will be incredibly dangerous due to the street functioning as a 6 lane highway, with this intersection just feet from the on-ramp to the Van Wyck Expressway. Luckily, Donovan Richards requested to re-open the College Point Bridge, which will save lives by allowing pedestrians to cross above the problematic intersection. At this intersection 29 year old Justin Leiva was run over and killed by a driver in 2020. We need a bridge to save the lives of future greenway users at that very spot, or else it will forever be a barrier for travel to and from western Queens. Either the College Point Boulevard Bridge needs to be re-opened, or it needs to be torn down and a better bridge erected in its place.

Luckily, there is an excellent plan for the crossing at Main Street (on the east side of the Botanical Gardens). This substantially upgraded connection is made possible due to the completely new path through Kissena Corridor Park.

Kissena Corridor Park and Kissena Park

The next sections of the greenway (4b, 5a, 5b, and 7) have a public plan (and it’s a really good one)!

The Kissena Corridor Park will build an entirely new path (see image above), since there is currently no east/west way to transverse the park. Not only will there be an entirely new section of transportation infrastructure, but it will also help root out the unfortunate crime attracted to the more secluded parts of the parkland. As Jane Jacobs said, “[T]here must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.”

Since right now there are no cyclists traveling east/west through the park (since there is currently no route) we feel Kissena Corridor Park is the perfect place to put an automated bike counter. It looks like there are about 18 across NYC already, so adding one here would be easy and would give real data to use for future projects and advocacy. Seeing the growth of cyclists along an entirely new route for years will help in understanding how long it takes for infrastructure to be discovered by the entire community.

The Kissena Park section will move the current path from being level with the swampland (or often flooded by the swamp) up to the elevated height of the old rail line. This will also help separate the cyclists traveling through the park with those just visiting the lake. This path will connect with both the north and south sections (including to the velodrome).

There will also be a new path built on the north side of the Kissena Park Golf Course, parallel to Underhill Avenue. This currently vacant space is such a wide gap that it appears to most people that the greenway has just ended. Engaging this space will be a major improvement for path-finding and safety. The connection will only work because of the traffic light we advocated for (and have had built) at 164th Street and Underhill Avenue.

All of these Kissena segments are funded and have been in design since December 2024. Currently only 5% of the design has been done, with the entire design phase estimated to be completed in the Spring of 2027.

On a quicker timetable, the Kissena Park Velodrome Bathrooms (Section 6) are fully designed and will be constructed in 2026. Since losing the bathrooms near the tennis courts, these new facilities will help bring back more restrooms for all parkgoers. Including these on the south side (in addition to the current boathouse bathrooms on the north side) will create better equity within the park, in addition to supporting more activity at the velodrome.

Peck Park

The Peck Park segment (section 8) has been funded but is not in the design phase yet. It will provided a protected east/west access path through the parkland, which will be a major improvement over the current class 2 and class 3 bike lanes nearby. We are concerned about the mid-block crossing at 188th Street and also at 58th Avenue; having traffic lights at the nearby 5 point intersections would not only create a safer greenway crossing, but also organize two areas of car chaos since most drivers don’t understand 5 point stop sign intersections.

Alley Edge

Years ago we had a major win when our “Alley Edge” project was installed. Adding 4.8 miles of protected bike lanes along the western edge of Alley Pond Park created the only safe north/south route in the area for cyclists. Although we remain proud of that accomplishment, we would really love to see the Alley Pond Park (section 9) be funded soon to improve the infrastructure along this route.

Motor Parkway East Extension

Next to the Eastern Queens Greenway is the Motor Parkway East project that would connect our path to the Long Island border. This is key since the Long Island Greenway is currently being built, and we need to give it something to connect to. The short Motor Parkway East project is only about 1 mile and has made it through both houses of New York State…twice…only to both times be vetoed by the last two governors due to funding questions. There is no reason that such a simple project should be batted between the City and State when it could be a bridge to help so many Queens residents reach the park system. Over 1,000 of these residents signed a petition asking for it to be built. If the state cannot get this project done, maybe it’s time for New York City to step up and fix the long overdue issue.

Path to Completion

We have heard of Eastern Queens Greenway delays due to inter-agency friction, including the State DoT’s Van Wyck Expressway construction, FEMA-funded work on The Joe Michaels Mile Waterfront Structural Reconstruction, and the Cloudburst Resilience initiative. We recognize a lot of coordination is needed in a City as complex as ours. Since we started our conversation with Parks almost 20 years ago, we feel that now is the time to prioritize the greenway and have other projects work around it.

As much as we can respect that gears of administration are moving slowly, there is a real cost to these delays. We’ve seen cyclist deaths and pedestrian deaths that might have been prevented if this infrastructure would have been built in time. We’ve seen horrendous assault after assault along the future path of the greenway, crimes that may not have happened if the greenway path opened up deserted parts of our parkland. Previous administrations have not prioritized Eastern Queens; now is the time to build this community-changing infrastructure. We hope that with this momentum we can fund the currently unfunded projects and move everything through the design phase as soon as possible.

We hope 2026 is a year we can partner more closely with the Department of Parks and the new Mayoral Administration to make major progress on the plan to finally complete the entire Eastern Queens Greenway. We are doing our best as activists to support our community, and we look forward to working with a city government that can complete this long-overdue project.

This has been our biggest project, working with a variety of politicians, city agencies, and neighbors. With two decades of advocacy, no one is as excited about the success of this greenway as we are. We hope this work echoes with greenways across New York, and beyond.