Over almost 20 years of advocacy and over $43 million dollars, our Destination:Greenways! plan is finally gaining momentum. You’ve already seen the amazing designs for Kissena Park and Kissena Corridor Park, but this Wednesday you can see what’s planned for Peck Park and share your thoughts on the new design proposal.

Meeting Location

This will be a zoom meeting that you will need to register to attend.

Wednesday, May 13th
6:30 PM
Register at: https://www.nycgovparks.org/reg/community-input-meetings/19648

Please note that this meeting is calling this section “Kissena Corridor Park – East” when most neighbors call it “Peck Park”. This is confusing since according to the Department of Parks there are two “Kissena Corridor Park” spaces, one to the east of Kissena Park and one to the west of Kissena Park. This Wednesday’s meeting will be about the greenway section from Fresh Meadows Lane to the LIE overpass. It’s Section 8 on the Destination:Greeways! map:

What we know of the plan:

This section of the greenway will be about 3/4th of a mile. It begins at Fresh Meadows Lane (where the greenway behind the golf course is being upgraded) and continues east to Utopia Parkway. From there it jogs north on Utopia half a block (which is at least concrete protected) and then winds through Peck Park, until it connects with the bridge going over the LIE towards St. Francis Prep High School. Here is the design plan we saw in February of 2022.

What We Want To know

This plan never would have happened without dedicated advocacy, so it’s our responsibility to continue to push for the best design for our community. For projects that take decades, we’ll only have one chance to get this right. These are some of the comments we gave the last time we saw the 2022 plan, which we hope have been updated since then.

Right now there is no traffic control at all when the greenway crosses Fresh Meadows Lane. We’re calling for at least a stop sign to give some protection to children crossing here, especially since large trucks sometimes park there blocking site lines.

Currently there is nothing going on between Fresh Meadow Lane and Utopia, it’s just grassland with a few trees. We’d love if this space was activated, possibly with some gym equipment or a native forest. Currently the area is often used as an illegal off-leash dog run, which has the potential to cause major conflicts when the greenway is completed and heavily used.

Just as with the Kissena Corridor (West) section of the greenway, we’d love to have a bike counter within this section. Seeing the difference in number of cyclists through these different sections could help us much better understand usage, especially how weather effects counts (assuming that casual users cycle less in bad weather, where working cyclists wouldn’t have that option).

We greatly appreciate that the DoT has created a bi-directional, concrete protected section on Utopia to bring the greenway to Underhill Avenue. That’s a real safety improvement. Although not part of this project, we are still waiting for the DoT to release it’s Complete Utopia project, where the entire length of Utopia Parkway will be reviewed for pedestrian and cyclist safety, by request of Community Board 11 in March 1st of 2021. We do hope the greenway plan will at least review the traffic light cycle to make sure greenway users are protected from turning drivers.

Within the parks, the major concern with the 2022 plan was that the greenways were routed near “home base” of the baseball fields. When a game is on, those areas can be crowded and we’re sure spectators will set up their chairs blocking the greenway, instead of on the grass. We’ve had major issue before of baseball spectators blocking the bike lane while watching a game (to keep their beer close). To avoid conflict, the greenway should always be on the outfield side of the baseball fields.

The final, though largest concern with the 2022 plan, is the mid-block greenway crossing on both 188th Street and 58th Avenue.

• We respect that the intersection at 58th Avenue and Underhill Avenue is not very good, it’s an incredibly long crossing distances and drivers coming off the highway are often impatient. But instead of adding a mid-block crossing on an overly wide street that has highway drivers racing down it, we’d propose just fixing the intersection and creating concrete sidewalk extensions to dramatically cut down the crossing distance.
• We also understand that the 5 way stop sign at the intersection of 188th Street, Underhill Avenue, and 53rd Avenue is a nightmare. Drivers how no idea how to navigate the intersection and from the skid-marks on the street we can see how this encourages late night donuts. Some of our members have actually seen cyclists run over at this intersection. But again, pushing the cyclist crossing on the overly-wide straightaway between Underhill and Peck will result in injuries. We need the Department of Parks to work with DoT to put in a stop light at the 5 way stop 188th Street, Underhill Avenue, and 53rd Avenue that gives a dedicated part of the light cycle to greenway users. This will be key in connecting to the 53rd Avenue bike lanes already connecting the community to the Park

We greatly appreciate the hard work that so many teams have put into this project. Now is the time to come together and make sure this generational project has maximum safety for all users, even long after we’re no long here.

Please come to the meeting on Wednesday and share your thoughts on how to improve the Department of Park’s plan. We really appreciate how the agency is listening to the community on this project.