Going Around In Circles

Drivers coming down 74th Street in Maspeth must turn right at Caldwell Avenue.

By Brian M. Rafferty

With half of Queens’ residents being new to the country, you’d think somebody would try to make navigating the borough a relatively simple task, right?

Well that was done years ago, some say, when named streets gave way to numbers. But that really didn’t affect a vast majority of roads that point at odd angles, that don’t quite run parallel to one another and that, over the years and through various stages of development, have been sheared, turned, split in two or dimply dead-ended, leaving drivers puzzled and late for their appointments.

One such area where great confusion lies is also within the most ethnically diverse part of this great borough of diversity – Elmhurst.

This is a place that has just got no luck when it comes to driving through. Once you move south of Roosevelt Avenue, between Broadway to the west, Junction Boulevard to the east and the Long island Rail Road to the south, this huge expanse of land becomes impassable. Wherever you go, you either end up on an avenue that dead-ends, or worse still, on Broadway.

Move south of the railroad, and you still can’t win because – guess what – once you get to the other side of Queens Boulevard, there’s another rail line. Now you have the fun and adventure of trying to go south into Maspeth. Unless you’re on 57th Avenue of Grand Avenue, just forget it. The streets are set up in such a way that you get looped back onto Queens Boulevard. How about from Woodhaven? Unless you go to the other side of the tracks and turn onto Eliot Avenue, you will never see Maspeth because, once again, you’re back on Woodhaven.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve made it up Grand Avenue, and now you want to go to the new Shops at Atlas Park. You can take 69th Street most of the way, or 80th, but that’s it – there’s this little road call the Long Island Expressway that gets in you way otherwise. Don’t even think of trying to go up 74th Street, even though it seems to beckon you onward. You may pull out of Stop & Shop and see that you can get under the LIE, but you won’t go far. You’ll make it as far as Caldwell Avenue, where you’ll be forced to turn right and start over back down on 69th Street.

The good news, for people who live in the area, is that those who know better just stay away from their quiet streets. The bad news is for everybody else, as driving in circles tends to eat up precious gasoline.