Planned new bike lane in industrial NYC neighborhood has business owners fuming: Just not safe

Businesses in one of the last-standing industrial corners of Long Island City say they can only take so much gentrification — and that a planned new bike lane has put them over the edge.Local industries argue that the cyclist carve-out in the trendy Queens neighborhood will be dangerous for their truck drivers — not to mention the bikers.“Not every street is safe for a bike lane.You wouldn’t put a bike lane down the middle of the LIE.

It’s just not safe.And this is similar,” argued Matthew Dienstag, co-owner of the local LeNoble Lumber.But the city — which touts on its transportation Web site that nearly 1 million New Yorkers regularly ride bikes — is plowing ahead with plans to connect the Pulaski and Kosciuszko bridges for bikers.The connection will come by way of Borden, Starr and Review avenues — a dangerous sector of Blissville infamous for its big-truck congestion.“It’s like, ‘This is what we’re doing, we don’t give a s–t.’ Excuse my French,” griped Michael Diamond of J&S Supply Corp, a 75-year-old insulation and roofing distributor company, to The Post, referring to the city’s stance.J&S Supply is one of the dozens of warehouse businesses, as well as a city Sanitation Department waste management facility, that contribute to the heavy stream of truck and forklift traffic traveling in and out of the corridor.Massive box trucks already swerve across both lanes of traffic to enter and exit their warehouses, a tricky maneuver made even more difficult by the overcrowded streets’ chronic double-parking problem.Local civic associations and the community board requested the bike lane as a solution to the safety issues.Five people, including two cyclists, were killed — and more than 170 others injured — on the local roads in the past five years.“We need to do everything we can to ensure we don’t lose another life to a preventable death,’’ city Councilwoman Julie Won told The Post. “Increasing pedestrian and...