This is what I see, now, outside my window.
It's an urban millennial's dream. I'm supposed to be happy.
I'm not the only one who isn't--and not only because I'm not a millennial. Some of my neighbors hate it. I can't say I blame them, even if their reasons are very different from mine.
A few weeks ago, the Crescent Street bike lane "opened for business," if you will. On paper, it sounds like something every cyclist in northwestern Queens (and, probably, other parts of this city) dreamed of: a direct bike route from the Robert F. Kennedy to the Ed Koch (or Triborough to 59th Street, to old-time New Yorkers) Bridges.
Now, if I were still riding to the college every day, or I were still working in Midtown or Downtown Manhattan, I might have welcomed the lane--had it taken a different route and been constructed differently.
One common complaint was that drivers on Crescent routinely exceeded the speed limit by a lot. It's not hard to see why: This stretch of Crescent is a long straightway not unlike some race tracks. And, as I mentioned, it connects the two bridges--as well as the Grand Central Parkway (which goes to the airports) to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and, in effect, four of the city's five boroughs. That is one reason it was so much used by taxi and car-service drivers, many of whose "home" offices and garages are near the RFK Bridge.
Even so, I didn't mind riding on Crescent: Because the street sliced through the neighborhood like an exclamation point, and I knew the drivers' habits, traffic was predictable. Plus, the drivers who regularly used Crescent knew that the neighborhood is residential and we--cyclists and pedestrians--also used the street.
But now there's only one traffic lane, so drivers can't maneuver--and become very short-tempered and resentful, sometimes endangering cyclists out of spite. Worse, they can't see you behind the row of parked cars. These are real problems when taxis, livery cars and other "work" vehicles pull into the lane to discharge or pick up passengers, as they often do by the hospital. If you're riding down from the RFK bridge, and you don't run into red lights, it's easy to build up speed. When an ambulance or truck pulls into the lane, you have no choice but to take a hard right into the traffic lane--or to end up in back of the ambulance!
One more thing: When cars parked along the curb, where the lane is now, they served as a buffer between traffic (bicycle and motor) and pedestrians crossing the street. Even if a careless pedestrian wandered, mid-block, into traffic, he or she had to cross through the parked cars. Now, those same pedestrians step directly into the bike lane as they're looking at their screens, oblivious to their surroundings.
Some of my neighbors would love to see the lane removed. I agree with them, almost. They complain that it's less convenient, or even "impossible" to park. To me, it's more dangerous--for me, for them and for pedestrians. The Crescent Street lane, I believe, would be better on another street: one that parallels Crescent (28th or 30th come to mind) from the RFK Bridge to Queensborough Plaza, where it's easy to access the Ed Koch Bridge.
