July 1st, 2020 @ 5:13 pm

for those of us who ride bikes on NYC streets, it’s SUPER scary having to depend on the people around us to respect our safety.  in queens, especially where i live, there are not enough bike lanes.  what there are plenty of, are a plethora of narrow streets with oversized vehicles being parked on said streets.  this borough is overpopulated and for some odd reason, households seem to think they need more than one car. under most circumstances, i’d agree that it’s none of my business how many cars a household has, but when people live in an apartment and most of them commute into the city for work, it’s fucking annoying.  i’m not even a driver that has to park a car and i find it annoying.

when i ride by bike around my neighborhood, i not only have to be aware of who is driving around me, but also who is parked and about to pull out in front of me, or who is going to open their parked car door.  you know what could help that?  DEDICATED FUCKIN BIKE LANES.

my bf is a driver, and he has very little respect for people on bikes.  when we were living on queens blvd, de blasioshithead decided to install pedestrian walkways in addition to the bike lane for queens blvd safety, lol.  the ped lanes were absolutely stupid because there are sidewalks running parallel to them AND no one is supposed to be crossing on the median anyhow.  so in turn, not only did it take up bike room real estate, it added nonsense real estate into the single lane area that i lived on.  it was two lanes with one line of parking, then it turned into one lane and one lane of parking. all it does is piss drivers off, LIKE MY BOYFRIEND.

we can’t be on the sidewalk, then we’re annoying for being in the street… we can’t win.

listen, i understand queens was built during another time, and it’s an unforgiving design/layout… but if there are areas where we *CAN* improve queens and utilize getting around safely on bikes, someone needs to step up and do it.  especially with MTA looking like it’s about to shit the bed and we need another mode of transportation.

there is no absolute path to get around NYC.  sure, we have the BK/queens greenway, but there are connections to each area – there is no safe, 100% car-free area connections.  i did find this site recently, which was SUPER exciting and helpful and i found this one years ago (i think it was the same one i found years ago) trying to repurpose old, unused railroad tracks.  the one i think i found years ago actually was only for connecting for bikes, not basically a park/highline type BS thing.  maybe it’s not the same one… either way, we don’t need another park thing where lazy, idiot parents are letting their toddlers run loose where bikers are trying to commute – biking isn’t just for fun, we have places to go, man.

when i was still living on queens blvd, it super ticked me off that there were massive medians not being utilized for anything.  why don’t we have a bike-only expressway built for us queens folks to get from near the courthouse straight into the city?  i guess maybe having a few main entrance/exits – but not many would be SO helpful.  it could be like a raised/highline type of system with two lanes on each side going in either direction.

i was inspired by the airtrain one day while driving to JFK.  when they built the airtrain, they did it directly above the van wyck.  i mean, it’s dead air space, why TF not?  look at these two maps i screenshot:

these are both perfect examples of what i was talking about where the empty medians.  the left picture is of western QB, and the other one is by my old apartment on the east end of QB.  it’s completely empty!  sure, there are plenty of trees NYC decided to plant, but that’s it!  rehome the wonderful treesies!

i mean, clearly after this pandemic, the city has no damn money for anything – but this would be SO helpful if it would become a reality.  what really grinds my gears, is that stupid de blasio did this whole ViSiOn ZeRo BS and didn’t even think of something like this? no, instead he wanted to give us a ridiculous stupid trolly system from red hook up to astoria, lol.  we’ve gone DECADES without idiot, hipster, domestic transplants that needed to connect in the various neighborhoods, let’s just keep it that way.  i feel like there’s something romantic about closing off certain parts of NYC to others.  just let NYC be for a while, fuck…  but i digress.

do you know how many people living in elmhurst, jackson heights, corona, etc could benefit from having a straight-shot into the city by bike?  sure, there are bike lanes in *parts* of queens, but this could be BICYCLES ONLY, ABOVE cars and SAFE…  if you’re not from ASStoria or long island city, clearly you don’t seem to matter…  fuck us outlier folks, i guess.