Jewel Avenue, 69th Road Need Safety Improvements, Locals Say

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Forest Hills residents are calling on city transportation officials to make safety improvements on Jewel Avenue and 69th Road, which one street safety activist recently called a "deadly corridor."

Members of Queens Community Board 6, which covers Forest Hills and Rego Park, say they want the NYC Department of Transportation to study safety issues and traffic flow on the two parallel streets between Queens Boulevard and the Grand Central Parkway.

Jewel Avenue and 69th Road channel drivers to Queens Boulevard and the Grand Central Parkway, both major roadways.

Meanwhile, cyclists commonly use the same streets to get to and from Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, according to Joby Jacob, who wrote about the two streets in an op-ed for Streetsblog.

Jacob, a Hollis Hills resident, called Jewel Avenue's entire three-mile stretch a "deadly corridor" with a history of fatal crashes that made it the "new Boulevard of Death," a nickname often used for Queens Boulevard.

Most recently, in September, a driver on Jewel Avenue hit and killed 75-year-old Kew Gardens Hills resident Elou Rakhminov — blocks away from the Jewel Avenue intersection where his wife was hit months earlier.

Rakhminov is among at least four people who have died from crashes on Jewel Avenue in the last two years, Jacob notes.

"It became clear that this study area posed safety and congestion challenges for everyone traveling through that space," Queens Community Board 6's transportation committee chair, Peter Beadle, wrote in a statement to Patch. "This is an area that poses some significant danger to our residents and a DOT study really is needed."

City Council Member Rory Lancman and state Assembly Member Daniel Rosenthal have also asked the transportation department to do a pedestrian safety study on a stretch of Jewel Avenue in Kew Gardens Hills, according to Streetsblog.