Queens seniors have some notes for the city’s transportation department when it comes to its first permanent Open Street on 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights: The signage on the blocks is confusing, there's a lack of trash bins and there aren't enough places to sit, among other things.

That’s all according to a recent report by older adult services organization Selfhelp, which conducted five group “walk audits” along the 1.3-mile stretch between 69th and 96th streets from July through November. Participants strolled the avenue and evaluated its walkability.

“There are a lot of motorbikes and things that go through there that annoyed me,” said Paul Hellegers, a resident of Selfhelp’s Northridge/Brulene/Southridge naturally occurring retirement community, or NORC, which organized the walks. He attended several of the outings. “The bike lanes changed from block to block, but I was more concerned about the number of motorized two-wheeled vehicles passing through there.”

Esther Curenton, another resident of the NORC who joined the walks, shared mixed feelings on the Open Street.

“I like the idea that people have space to walk safely, run safely, what have you. I don't know that it has to be 26 blocks,” she said. “I  don't think all needs are met by the closed street. … When you look at all the avenues together, having that space not available for parking is still kind of rough.”

The report comes as the city Department of Transportation carries out the beginning stages of a capital project to further transform the street, gathering feedback from the community through public workshops. The project seeks to simplify the corridor’s design, add landscaping and construct permanent plazas.

In its report, Selfhelp recommended the bike lane stay consistent throughout the entire Open Street instead of changing locations from the middle of the street in some blocks to the curb in others, and sometimes being painted green and sometimes not. The group also recommended more trash bins and benches along the avenue, adding that officials should improve the landscaping of certain medians and better surveil the use of motorized bikes and mopeds.

Transportation department spokesperson Will Livingston said the department’s redesign of the street has made it safer, with crashes involving pedestrians between Aug. 1, 2022 and July 31, 2023 down 60%.

“We appreciate all the work Selfhelp does to provide recommendations and other local input as we continue to transform 34th Avenue both in the near term and as part of the future capital construction,” he said.

The 34th Avenue Open Street was initially created during the pandemic-era Open Streets program, which closed streets across the city to cars during certain hours to create more open spaces while New Yorkers were asked not to gather indoors. A bill passed by the City Council in 2021 expanded the program and made the 34th Avenue Open Street permanent. Only local car traffic is allowed from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.

Karen Taylor, the NORC’s program director, said the audit walks gave a voice to older adults in the community who felt they had been left out of the initial discussions about the use of the street, many of which happened online due to social-distancing protocols.

”When the street became permanent, it was a very big surprise to a lot of our older adults who would've believed that they would've been notified about these things and had not been,” Taylor said. “ So one of the reasons that I applied for this walk-audit grant from AARP was because I wanted to be able to take a lot of our older adults’ frustrations or complaints, and help them put them into concrete action.”

AARP, which advocates on behalf of older people, also provided a toolkit that included worksheets participants used to track their observations.

Jim Burke, a street safety advocate and one of the cofounders of the 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition, which does programming on the Open Street, said he went on two of the walks with Selfhelp and found them to be an “eye-opening” experience.

“We make assumptions, right? ‘Well, everybody knows that the bike lane is plain in green or everybody knows where it's located’ — that wasn't the case,” he said. “ Just walking with the people who navigate the streets you know who were two, sometimes three decades older than I was, was super interesting and gave me a different perspective.”

Burke added, “If we can make it nicer and safer and win more people over, I hope we can do that.”