Council Member Krishnan asks DOT about micromobility lane on Northern Boulevard

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Chairs, very much for this important hearing.

It's good to see you all, Commissioners and teams.

I just have one question in particular for Commissioner Flynn.

I know this is an issue we've talked about a bunch.

And, you know, just taking a step back for a second, you know, it's very clear in why this hearing is so important is that our streets are being used in so many different ways.

Those uses are proliferating, and they're outpacing our current efforts to address them.

And so that gap is what we as a city need to address.

And there are different ways to do it.

do so.

We've talked a lot about enforcement.

There's also design, and I want to talk about design in particular.

As you know, Commissioner Flynn, I've been a big champion on public spaces and safe streets.

We've got in Jackson Heights our 34th Avenue Open Street Paseo Park, which is the longest and most successful open street in the city.

And I wanted to address the fact that we've seen a large number of mopeds speeding down our open street.

We've got six public schools there.

I'm hearing repeatedly of children being hit or almost hit by mopeds, seniors.

Just last week, a constituent let me know that his five-year-old child was hit by a moped on the way to pre-K.

And the design solution that I think works very effectively is mopeds are using the bike lane on our Paseo Park, even though they're a class three motor vehicle.

Because they'd rather go on a street for pedestrians than go on a street with cars, and that's what we need to address.

Northern Boulevard presents a really important opportunity for a micromobility lane, one that will

allow mopeds that are vehicles to go where they should go and not in a pedestrianized space like our open street, and would make the open street and the neighborhood a lot safer.

I know that there is a bus lane on Northern Boulevard too, but I maintain that there are creative ways to ensure we have public transit like buses and a micromobility lane as well, and we can figure that out together.

So I just wanted to get a sense, and this is a solution, by the way, a micromobility lane on Northern Boulevard that's supported.

by Safe Street Advocates, my constituents, the Deliverist does, because it gives them safe passage too as they go.

It's an all-around winning solution.

So I know we've talked about it a bunch, and I'd just like to know your willingness and openness to work with me as an agency to create a micro-mobility lane on Northern Boulevard and make the street safer for all users.

Thank you so much, Council Member, and I appreciate your thoughtful framing of the issue.

It's interesting, right?

We have kind of two things that have been evolving rapidly in parallel since COVID.

You know, we've really seen an expansion and continues to be a priority of pedestrian space and, you know, more higher and better use of some of our streets and 34th Avenue is a great example.

At the same time, we've seen this evolution in the micromobility space that we're talking about today that comes with challenges.

34Th Ave and Northern Boulevard are a really interesting case study, right, in terms of how we approach these issues, how, like I mentioned a moment ago, every street can't always do everything, and so we have to look at a network level as well, right?

There's challenges with that, too.

We've identified Northern Boulevard as one of our bus priority corridors in our bus action plan, so there's a question of how, you know, we try to do all of these things.

And so to your last question, I would absolutely commit to having those conversations and trying to find the best possible solution.

I'll say in terms of the infrastructure side more broadly, we're really excited and proud that the mayor's made a history.

level of investment in DOT, in our resources to ramp up our output, and we're definitely on track for a record level this year of bus and bike and other improvements like that.

I do want to clarify one thing, which is, and I guess it gets back to Chair Abreu's point earlier about nomenclature,

mopeds specifically are actually not allowed to be in bike lanes, so we would have to think about a solution, if we really mean mopeds specifically, you know, that works in that regard.

Class, you know, e-bikes, legal e-bikes can.

So it's just about those nuances.

Thank you.

And if you could just follow up with the council member's district-specific request, that would be great.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.