A newly-painted bike lane on 11th St., part of the DOT’s safety improvements to the street. (Photo: Nathaly Pesantez)
July 3, 2018 By Nathaly Pesantez
The city is making some changes to a major roadway in Long Island City.
Starting this month, the Department of Transportation will be implementing a number of safety improvements on a stretch of 11th Street from 44th Drive to 47th Avenue.
The changes in the five-block project area include eliminating a travel lane in both directions in some parts, and adding a painted bike lane between the parking and travel lanes.
Between 44th Drive and 47th Avenue, the DOT will be painting a dedicated bike lane on the north and southbound direction, and reduce the car travel lanes from two to one. In addition, the parking lane will be ever so slightly expanded, but will remain in use as a parking site.
A painted buffer will also jut out from the median to help narrow the roadway within these blocks.
But on the northbound side of 44th Drive up until 45th Avenue, however, the current shared bike and travel lane configuration will remain, and is the only place that will not see a change in the roadway layout.
The DOT said the changes date back to 2015 at the request of Community Board 2 and after a planning process with the community. The changes are an upgrade to an existing, important, and well-used connection to the Pulaski Bridge.
“This project will reduce speeding and improve access to the bridge with clearer lane assignments for cyclists and motorists, [and] upgrading the shared bike lane to a dedicated bike lane,” a DOT spokesperson said.
Cars heading from 11th Street into the Pulaski Bridge, which also includes a protected section for cyclists. (Photo: Nathaly Pesantez)
The roadway has already started to see the changes laid out, with bike lanes painted from 44th road to 46th Avenue after a fresh repaving of the roadway which began in June. The remainder of the project area still needs to be filled in, with some intersections still missing crosswalks and other markings.
Changes to 11th Street in Long Island City. (DOT)
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18 Comments
As a regular bike commuter to Manhattan that stretch of 11th is the scariest part of the commute as cars are flying past me in a shared lane, well above the legal speed limit.
Ummm … a bike lane is a travel lane.
Isn’t there a bike lane on Vernon, just one block away? Plus, DOT paves and paints, but never rebuilds the broken decrepit median along 11th Street.
There’s no safe way to get to Vernon from the bridge, which these changes will address. Hop on a bike sometime and learn your neighborhood.
The DoT car haters are at it again! 11th Street is now down to one lane! Can you just imagine how backed up the traffic will be? You don’t have to, just look at it, or be stuck in it, after the 4th!
Yeah, car traffic is so bad, if only there were some viable alternative to cars that would alleviate the problem.
You staying home?
Walk or buy a bike. I love how butthurt lazy people get over the expansion of biking in the city.
Oh, this is good. Too many drivers treat this route like a mini-expressway.
Agree. Perhaps they should widen the median too and put some additional plantings in to bolster the sickly trees already in place. 11th St needs to become less of an expressway, given the amount of residential development there.
Except 11th street directly joins the Pulaski bridge to the upper level of the Queensborough bridge, so it is the primary connecting road between north Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The upper level only has two lanes in each direction, wouldn’t the wider 11th cause more congestion on the bridge itself?
The speed limit is 25mph not 40 which is the speed that vehicles were traveling on this stretch of road. Having a single lane will calm the traffic and not appreciably change the time it takes to get from the Pulaski to the Queensboro Bridge.
“Calm traffic.” What a racket! The car haters at the DoT want to punish drivers, purposely slow their commute or driving to a complete halt. The car haters are clueless and indifferent of the car-depended reality of millions in the outer Boroughs. They despise drivers and their needs as parents (yes, many New Yorkers have kids that have to go to soccer games, classes, church, all over Queens and Brooklyn).
So? Drive more slowly between the two bridges…it will only add 2 minutes to you commute.
Oh great, these HIPSTERS want an entire lane for bikes when we don’t even have enough bowling lanes. Typical DUMB-O-CRATS want alternative transportation, do they think the 7 train is crowded or some other nonsense?
The FAKE MRLIC wrote the July 3, 2018 comment on Hipsters and Bowling Lanes. He/She can’t get their own screen name so it is fun to them hijack another persons screen name.
noone cares. ever.