72nd Road (Google)
Nov. 21, 2017 By Tara Law
A Forest Hills street that many residents claim is narrow and often congested may soon be converted to one-way.
Community Board 6, which covers Forest Hills and adjacent areas, will soon be reviewing a Department of Transportation proposal to convert 72nd Road between Grand Central Parkway and Queens Boulevard from a two-way to a one-way.
The initiative was triggered by residents who requested the street be changed in response to heavy traffic volume and the narrowness of the roadway, according to Frank Gulluscio, district manager of Community Board 6.
Residents claim that numerous fender benders have taken place on the street, Gulluscio said.
The DOT will implement the proposed conversion should the community board vote to approve it and formally submits a written request.
Gulluscio said that the board aims to have a vote at its Dec. 13 meeting.
The DOT determined that converting the road is “feasible” in an engineering study conducted this summer at the community board’s request. A DOT spokesman said that the department will present the findings to the community board once the board finalizes a date.
The DOT said that the road will still be adequately accessible to first responders after the conversion.
“During previous one-way conversions, we have not observed problems for emergency vehicles accessing areas once the street direction was changed,” said a DOT spokesperson.
4 Comments
You don’t need to make it one way. Just remove the parking from one side. That way there is would be room for 2 way traffic.
That’s the common sense solution. Hopefully, this will happen.
Not a good idea, this street is excess to the Grand Central Parkway Entrance, if any fender benders happening that’s not the street fault, Bad drivers to blame. Don’t make that stupid changes.
Reluctantly agreed, depending on which one way the street will go. Oddly, the article doesn’t say. If one-way E to W, then to get to the GCP, drivers would have to detour all the way to Jewel Avenue, because streets between 72nd Road and Jewel don’t go through to the GCP service road. If made one-way W to E, that would provide good traffic-flow options, and might reduce head-on collisions, but might in fact increase traffic volume, as the path will be easier to travel. I don’t know if speed bumps and an additional stop sign (at 113th St) would suffice to fix that, but they should be considered.
Meanwhile, there is already no way for a cyclist (obeying traffic rules) to get from there to points southeast without riding on Queens Blvd or detouring way over to the Gardens. I therefore look forward to extension of the QB bike path, but it will already eliminate some parking. Eliminating parking on one side of 72nd Road would be a further strain.
PS: A better illustration from Google Streetview would have been one block east:
https://goo.gl/maps/cksryieE27L2