Riverfront Greenway Plans Draw Questions, Comments
BY THOMAS COGAN

Councilman Gioia recently announced a bold initiative to create a 10.6 mile greenway in Queens that will span the entire length of the borough’s western bank, forever reshaping the borough’s riverside landscape and recapturing a waterfront that has been cut off from the City’s residents for decades. Here, Gioia discusses the initiative and outlines the route of the new greenway.

The East River-North Shore Greenway was presented in its latest outline at a meeting held at the ARROW (Astoria Residents Recycling for Our World) center in Astoria in late January. The meeting, a joint effort of the Department of City Planning and the city Department of Parks & Recreation, was for the benefit of anyone not familiar with the Greenway. It was evident, though, that a large number of attendees have been acquainted with it for some time and were ready to exchange information and opinions with the departmental presenters.

The Greenway runs from the Pulaski Bridge, where 11th Street crosses Newtown Creek and connects Long Island City to Greenpoint, to a cove on Flushing Bay, beyond La Guardia Airport. It covers a distance of 10.6 miles and is part of a network of existing and proposed greenways through Queens and Brooklyn. As Jennifer Hoppa, deputy director, Parks & Recreation, told the audience, the Greenway is intended for bicyclists, pedestrians and inline skaters. It both borders and bisects parks and goes through streets. The “end game”, she said, is to get people to the waterfront. She and the other presenters—Richard Schmidt and Angela Kelly, also of City Planning, and Jennifer Kao of Parks & Recreation—were at the meeting to hear complaints and suggestions about this project that is very much in progress. The audience contained many passionate Greenway devotees, including members of Partnership for Parks and Transportation Alternatives, whose business card describes the group as “Your advocate for walking, bicycling and sensible transportation”.

As the presentation revealed, the Greenway traveler, following the route fully, would spend a good deal of walking time away from the waterfront, whatever the end game might be. Such wandering begins early. The riverfront in Long Island City may one day be totally accessible from Newtown Creek to the KeySpan plant, but at present the Greenway goes through streets, such as Vernon Boulevard, a Class 3 route. There are three classes of routing on a greenway. Class 1 is a shareduse trail, being either a dual carriageway or a shared-use path. Either one provides strict separation of motorized and nonmotorized traffic. A dual carriageway provides further separation, between pedestrian and wheeled traffic, while a shared-use path separates them the way they are separated on the Brooklyn and Queensboro Bridges (good, if not quite greenway, examples of Class 1). Class 2 puts the bicyclist amidst the motorized vehicles in a striped lane, while Class 3 provides no special lane but a signed on-street route. City Planning states in its literature that for Class 2 and 3 routes, sidewalks or a separate facility for pedestrians must complement the bicycle facility to constitute a complete greenway.

The early stages of the Greenway are the most promising, because despite current impediments, one can envision a Class 1 run from Newtown Creek to the end of Queensbridge Park, at which point one of the world’s largest power plants is situated. Jennifer Kao described this part of the river route, noting that the current riverfront building projects, namely Queens West, Riverfront East and Silvercup West, will all provide a waterfront esplanade. Kao said that the people at the Con Edison installation south of the Queensboro Bridge show no intention of opening its waterfront property to the public— so if for no other reason, Greenway riders must resort to Vernon Boulevard. The issue of that street engaged several speakers, some of whom believe that the sidewalk on one side of the road is wide enough to be converted to pathways for pedestrians and cyclists—a Class 1 trail. One said it was necessary to show motorists that bicycles had arrived, but right now they travel third class, in the roadway with cars and trucks. A woman said that such a situation was dangerous and unacceptable, and another person suggested that trucks be removed from Vernon Boulevard and forced to use 11th Street. Spokespersons from parts of the Greenway distant from Long Island City and Astoria had their say, too. Grace Lawrence, vice chairwoman of Community Board 3, said a proposed bike lane on Ditmars Boulevard, close to La Guardia Airport, is dangerous on such a narrow, busy road. She also asked the speakers to make a presentation at a Board 3 meeting. Perhaps a bike lane directly on Ditmars Boulevard in the vicinity of the airport is a replacement for a now defunct plan to put a lane beside the Grand Central Parkway. A man asked what had become of that plan and was told it was abandoned as not feasible. The man disagreed, saying that there is a lot of green space on the north side of the parkway and locating a bike lane there should be reconsidered. And replying to doubters, David Snetman, campaign coordinator for Transportation Alternatives, said that bicycle routes on streets are not being pursued aggressively enough; they will work, he insisted.

Hoppa said that the Planning and Parks Departments, in cooperation with the city Department of Transportation, would collect comments until early March. She reminded her listeners that the city has dominion only over public property, and that routes along private lands would be gained only through negotiation. The phase of planning they are now addressing has a time frame of three years. Anything beyond that has yet to be planned, though such as 2015 are mentioned from time to time.

This coming Saturday, February 4, is a much closer date, and at that time Transportation Alternatives and the Astoria/LIC Waterfront Parks Catalyst Project intend to run an exploratory bicycle tour of the Greenway for about five miles. For further information, the first group is available at 212-629-8080 or transalt.org; the second group at 718-706-8044 or astoriawaterfront. org.