According to 2011–2015
ACS microdata, 38% of Queens households did not own a car; the citywide rate is 55%. The airport's original official name was New York International Airport, although it was commonly known as Idlewild, with the name changed to Kennedy in December 1963 to honor the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963.
Sunnyside Yard is used to store
Amtrak intercity and
NJ Transit commuter trains from Penn Station in Manhattan. The US$11.1 billion
East Side Access project, which brought LIRR trains to
Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, opened in 2023; this project created a new train tunnel beneath the
East River, connecting
Long Island City in Queens with the
East Side of Manhattan.
Water transit with the
Midtown Manhattan skyline in the background
New York Water Taxi operates service across the
East River from
Hunters Point in Long Island City to Manhattan at
34th Street and south to Pier 11 at
Wall Street. In 2007, limited weekday service was begun between
Breezy Point, the westernmost point in the Rockaways, to Pier 11 via the
Brooklyn Army Terminal. Summertime weekend service provides service from Lower Manhattan and southwest Brooklyn to the peninsula's
Gateway beaches. In the
aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012, ferry operator
SeaStreak began running a city-subsidized ferry service between a makeshift ferry slip at Beach 108th Street and
Beach Channel Drive in
Rockaway Park and piers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The service was extended multiple times. finally ending on October 31, 2014. In February 2015, Mayor
Bill de Blasio announced that the city government would begin a citywide ferry service called
NYC Ferry to extend ferry transportation to communities in the city that have been traditionally underserved by public transit. The ferry opened in May 2017, with the Queens neighborhoods of Rockaway and Astoria served by their eponymous routes. A third route, the
East River Ferry, serves
Hunter's Point South.
Roads Highways path above the
Van Wyck Expressway Queens is traversed by three trunk east–west highways. The
Long Island Expressway (
Interstate 495) runs from the
Queens Midtown Tunnel on the west through the borough to Nassau County on the east. The
Grand Central Parkway, whose western terminus is the
Triborough Bridge, extends east to the Queens/Nassau border, where the roadway continues as the
Northern State Parkway. The
Belt Parkway begins at the
Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, and extends east into Queens, past
Aqueduct Racetrack and JFK Airport. On its eastern end at the Queens/Nassau border, it splits into the
Southern State Parkway which continues east, and the
Cross Island Parkway which turns north. There are also several major north–south highways in Queens, including the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (
Interstate 278), the
Van Wyck Expressway (
Interstate 678), the
Clearview Expressway (
Interstate 295), and the Cross Island Parkway. Queens has six state highways that run west–east largely on surface roads. From north to south, they are
New York State Route 25A (Northern Boulevard),
New York State Route 25B (Hillside Avenue),
New York State Route 25 (
Queens Boulevard, Hillside Avenue, and Braddock Avenue),
New York State Route 24 (Hempstead Avenue), and
New York State Route 27 (
Conduit Avenue). The only state highway that primarily uses an expressway is
New York State Route 878, which uses the Nassau Expressway in southern Queens.
Streets The streets of Queens are laid out in a semi-
grid system, with a numerical system of
street names (similar to Manhattan and the Bronx). Nearly all roadways oriented north–south are "Streets", while east–west roadways are "Avenues", beginning with the number 1 in the west for Streets and the north for Avenues. In some parts of the borough, several consecutive streets may share numbers (for instance, 72nd Street followed by 72nd Place and 72nd Lane, or 52nd Avenue followed by 52nd Road, 52nd Drive, and 52nd Court), often confusing non-residents. Also, incongruous alignments of street grids, unusual street paths due to geography, or other circumstances often lead to the skipping of numbers (for instance, on Ditmars Boulevard, 70th Street is followed by Hazen Street which is followed by 49th Street). Numbered roads tend to be residential, although numbered commercial streets are not rare. A fair number of streets that were country roads in the 18th and 19th centuries (especially major thoroughfares such as
Northern Boulevard,
Queens Boulevard,
Hillside Avenue, and
Jamaica Avenue) carry names rather than numbers, typically though not uniformly called "Boulevards" or "Parkways". Queens
house numbering was designed to provide convenience in locating the address itself; the first half of a number in a Queens address refers to the nearest cross street, the second half refers to the house or lot number from where the street begins from that cross street, followed by the name of the street itself. For example, to find an address in Queens, 14-01 120th Street, one could ascertain from the address structure itself that the listed address is at the intersection of 14th Avenue and 120th Street and that the address must be closest to 14th Avenue rather than 15th Avenue, as it is the first lot on the block. This pattern does not stop when a street is named, assuming that there is an existing numbered cross-street. For example,
Queens College is situated at 65–30 Kissena Boulevard, and is so named because the cross-street closest to the entrance is 65th Avenue. Many of the village street grids of Queens had only worded names, some were numbered according to local numbering schemes, and some had a mix of words and numbers. In the early 1920s, a "Philadelphia Plan" was instituted to overlay one numbered system upon the whole borough. The Topographical Bureau, Borough of Queens, worked out the details. Subway stations were only partly renamed, and some, including those along the
IRT Flushing Line (), now share dual names after the original street names. In 2012, some numbered streets in the
Douglaston Hill Historic District were renamed to their original names, with 43rd Avenue becoming Pine Street. The Rockaway Peninsula does not follow the same system as the rest of the borough and has its own numbering system. Streets are numbered in ascending order heading west from near the Nassau County border, and are prefixed with the word "Beach". Streets at the easternmost end, however, are nearly all named.
Bayswater, which is on Jamaica Bay, has its numbered streets prefixed with the word "Bay" rather than "Beach". Another deviation from the norm is
Broad Channel; it maintains the north–south numbering progression but uses only the suffix "Road", as well as the prefixes "West" and "East", depending on location relative to
Cross Bay Boulevard, the neighborhood's major through street. Broad Channel's streets were a continuation of the mainland Queens grid in the 1950s; formerly the highest-numbered avenue in Queens was 208th Avenue rather than today's 165th Avenue in Howard Beach & Hamilton Beach. The other exception is the neighborhood of Ridgewood, which for the most part shares a grid and
house numbering system with the Brooklyn neighborhood of
Bushwick. The grid runs east–west from the LIRR
Bay Ridge Branch right-of-way to Flushing Avenue; and north–south from Forest Avenue in Ridgewood to
Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn before adjusting to meet up with the
Bedford-Stuyvesant grid at Broadway. All streets on the grid have names.
Bridges and tunnels connects Queens with
Manhattan and
The Bronx. Queens is connected to the Bronx by the
Bronx–Whitestone Bridge, the
Throgs Neck Bridge, the
Triborough Bridge (also known as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), and the
Hell Gate Bridge. Queens is connected to Manhattan Island by the Triborough Bridge, the
Queensboro Bridge, and the
Queens–Midtown Tunnel, as well as to
Roosevelt Island by the
Roosevelt Island Bridge. While most of the Queens/Brooklyn border is on land, the
Kosciuszko Bridge crosses the
Newtown Creek connecting
Maspeth to
Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The
Pulaski Bridge connects
McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint to 11th Street, Jackson Avenue, and Hunters Point Avenue in
Long Island City. The J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge (a.k.a.
Greenpoint Avenue Bridge) connects the sections of
Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint and Long Island City. A lesser bridge connects
Grand Avenue in Queens to Grand Street in Brooklyn. The
Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, built in 1939, traverses Jamaica Bay to connect the Rockaway Peninsula to
Broad Channel and the rest of Queens. Constructed in 1937, the
Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge links
Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn's longest thoroughfare, with
Jacob Riis Park and the western end of the Peninsula. Both crossings were built and continue to be operated by what is now known as
MTA Bridges and Tunnels. The
IND Rockaway Line parallels the Cross Bay, has a mid-bay station at
Broad Channel which is just a short walk from the
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, now part of
Gateway National Recreation Area and a major stop on the
Atlantic Flyway. ==Notable people==