A 29-year-old Brooklyn motorcyclist is dead after he was thrown from his bike on the westbound Queensboro Bridge ramp in Long Island City on Thursday night, striking the left median before suffering severe trauma that proved fatal. The crash snarled traffic for hours and forced drivers across the area to find another way into Manhattan.
The victim was identified as Luis Cadena, of East 70th Street in Bergen Beach, according to QNS. The 108th Precinct responded to a 911 call at approximately 6:20 p.m. Thursday reporting a motor vehicle collision on the bridge's westbound lanes, the outlet reported.
Investigators with the NYPD Highway District's Collision Investigation Squad determined that Cadena was riding a 2025 Yamaha R7 on the Manhattan-bound ramp from Thomson Avenue onto the bridge when he failed to navigate the roadway and struck the left median, per NYPD's account relayed by the outlet. He was ejected from the motorcycle and sustained severe trauma to his body.
Rushed to Weill Cornell, Later Pronounced Dead
EMS transported Cadena to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition, where he was later pronounced dead, the report states. The investigation remained ongoing as of the report, with the Collision Investigation Squad continuing to examine what happened on the ramp.
The crash triggered long delays across the neighborhood. The westbound ramp to the Queensboro Bridge was backed up for hours, and traffic also piled up on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside and Woodside, prompting officials to advise motorists to seek alternate routes, per the same account.
A Ramp With a History of Deadly Crashes
Thursday's crash is not the first fatal wreck on that stretch of roadway. In August 2016, 26-year-old Joshua Persaud was killed after his Honda motorcycle struck a Toyota Highlander while he was riding west onto the bridge from the same Thomson Avenue entrance ramp, according to a report from DNAinfo. Persaud was thrown from his bike and fell into a parking lot below before he was taken to New York Cornell Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Thomson Avenue itself is a wide, two-way, six-lane road that funnels vehicles to and from the bridge through Long Island City, as Streetsblog has previously reported. A proposed city redesign of the corridor would have widened car lanes while narrowing a sidewalk by 10 feet, with no provision made for cycling infrastructure, according to that same report.
The Queensboro Bridge's approaches have drawn scrutiny beyond motor vehicle crashes as well. Two people were killed in a collision in the bridge's westbound bike lane on a Thursday morning, when 39-year-old Francis Delvalle of Paramus, New Jersey, riding a stand-up scooter, collided with 35-year-old Dmytro Stechenko of Queens, who was riding a bicycle eastbound in the lane, CBS News New York reported. Advocates said afterward that the city's bike infrastructure was never built for devices moving that fast, especially at congested narrow points like the Queensboro Bridge, according to NY1.
No arrests or citations connected to Thursday's crash have been reported. The NYPD Highway District's Collision Investigation Squad continues to investigate exactly what happened on the ramp before Cadena struck the median.
