Last year, we reported on a Queens-Manhattan bike bridge – the Queens Ribbon – threatening Roosevelt Island. The pandemic brought the idea to a slow crawl, but a city master plan, released last week, showed it still breathing.
By David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
A Queens-Manhattan Bike Bridge Looming Over What’s Left of Southpoint Park
Former traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz proposed the Queens-Manhattan bike bridge in 2020. The elitist feel of a plan ignoring Roosevelt Island while parking a giant footprint on it was ominous.
A 300-foot tall, 200-foot wide clunker planted in a narrow strip of Southpoint Park sounds like a death knell, especially after RIOC and soulmate Langan decimated the shorelines, this year.
Imagine the height of a thirty-story building throwing shadows across the park while its base, more than half the size of a football field, makes useless a chunk of meadows. How many more trees gone?
And don’t forget the mechanical space required for an elevator for dropping bikers off on Roosevelt Island.
It’s a vision so grisly you’d think the light of day would make it too ugly for survival.
But, so far, it isn’t. Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson are leaving it as a parting gift for Roosevelt Island.
New Cycling Connections Master Plan
DOT will identify locations with significant demand for new cycling/pedestrian bridges that could provide safer, more direct routes (such as Newtown Creek, Coney Island Creek, Hunters Point/Roosevelt Island), and initiate concept design studies.
Master Plan for City Streets
As a wrap-up on the mayor’s mostly failed Vision Zero effort, he and Johnson released an aggressive plan. It covers “…development of bus, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure over the next five years.”
And most of it’s good stuff.
“Community engagement will guide all of DOT’s street redesign projects, including vehicle, pedestrian, cyclist, and bus infrastructure,” it pledges.
But which community makes the call? Biking or residents affected? Who stands up for Roosevelt Island? Tallying that total with the current, ultra-passive version of RIOC brings us to… zero.
We certainly need more and better mass transit, and bike lanes must expand, making them really effective. But some plans so dazzled the planners, it blinded them to the downside. That’s certainly true with the Queens-Manhattan bike bridge.
Why a Queens-Manhattan bike bridge is a bad idea
Let’s count the ways;
- The massive intrusion on the now badly damaged Southpoint Park might render it unrecognizable.
- RIOC Public Safety can’t handle the bike traffic we have already. Do we need more bikes racing through crosswalks and stop signs? Scattering pedestrians on sidewalks and promenades?
- Keeping in mind that we’re talking a mix that’s not all pedalers, more delivery by eBikes is inevitable. Picture an influx entering and leaving Southpoint along now hazardous paths, never pausing for stop signs, pedestrians and intersections.
Although exaggerated, the value of increasing bike traffic is certain as is anything that reduces cars. But Southpoint Park is the wrong place.
Already losing its identity as a quiet patch of retreat for residents footing all the bills, the park grows more vulnerable with easier access for outsiders.
Don’t mistake what a Queens-Manhattan bike bridge delivers for the casual, respectful visitors Four Freedoms State Park brings.
Some bike riders are model citizens, but for too many others, entitlement means owning streets and parks supposedly shared with the rest of us.
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Stack Work Advances While Answers Do Not
On June 17 and 18, HPD told the first meeting of the Roosevelt Island Steam Plant Demolition Community Advisory Group that smokestack demolition had no projected start date. Residents and the CAG would receive at least five business days’ advance notice once a date was set. Scaffolding around the stacks could not proceed until soil removal and backfill were complete and the area stabilized.
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