Safety Zone Added to Recently-Installed Median on Little Neck Parkway

Douglaston and Little Neck residents said that the unintended consequences from recently instituted traffic changes near Little Neck's Long Island Rail Road crossing just got worse.

"It's made a real mess for us up here," said Larry Sheehan, referring to a new safety zone extending approximately 75 feet from an existing traffic median north of the at-grade Long Island Railroad crossing on Little Neck Parkway.

Workers painted the new zone on Monday, weeks after  by residents, community leaders and elected officials about unsafe conditions and blocked traffic caused by the median installed in September.

"It doesn't solve anything, but just creates more confusion," said Douglaston Civic Association president Eliott Socci. 

According to Sheehan, who lives in the neighborhood north of the LIRR tracks, the new safety zone forces northbound motorists on Little Neck Parkway at night to effectively break traffic laws.

"Now you have a scenario at 6 p.m. where cars can park there and the traffic is directed right into the rear of the cars with nowhere to go, because you can't go into the safety zone," he said.

Currently, no parking hours at the LIRR crossing north to the Armenian Center parking lot on Little Neck Parkway run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Sheehan and other residents have advocated replacing the No Parking signs with all-hours No Standing signs in order to keep the tight at-grade crossing near Little Neck station clear.

However, that change might prove unpopular for commuters getting dropped off and picked up at Little Neck station.

A quick survey of the intersection during daylight hours Tuesday had several motorists traveling north on Little Neck Parkway illegally crossing into the new painted safety zone to make a tight U-turn onto Sandhill Road — precisely the kind of maneuver the most recent traffic change aimed to prevent.

City Department of Transportation borough commissioner Maura McCarthy first informed the community of plans to add a painted extension to the median by way of a letter read at last month's meeting of the neighborhood Westmoreland Association.

But so far, it seemed that the new changes, at best, did little to allay residents concerns.

"The idea is that people are not supposed to make a U-turn there," Socci said. "They have hours of no parking but, if they are parked there, you can't cross without getting on the extension. It's kind of dumb."