159 Street, Queens: Grade C · 311, HPD & Crash Data
Grade C, 44 out of 100. How does 159 Street in Queens rank for traffic safety, noise, and cleanliness?
Livability score
Grade C, livability 44 out of 100.
Calm 40, ranked against numbered streets. Access 50, ranked against every street in the city. More complaints per home than most numbered streets, and little within a walk.
That puts 159 Street in the bottom 29% of scored streets citywide.
Strongest on housing (69) and tree cover (97). Quietness (1) is the weak spot.
On the record
More 311 reports on 159 Street name street/sidewalk noise than any other category, 3,086 of them, and the block ranks in the louder half of numbered streets. The whole 311 file on 159 Street holds 4,245 reports, and street/sidewalk noise is 73% of it. Residential noise follows with 182 reports, and illegal parking with 129. The file runs across 65 distinct 311 categories in all. Divided by the homes on file, 159 Street carries roughly 281 reports per 100 of them.
159 Street carries 26 Class C violations on its HPD file, the most serious of the three classes an inspector can write, about 2 per 100 homes on file. HPD's most-cited category on 159 Street is pests, at 50 violations. Paint and lead follows at 19 violations, then bed bugs at 14. PLUTO counts 693 residential buildings and 1,511 homes on 159 Street, with 42 walk-ups and 1 elevator buildings among them. That averages about 2.2 homes to a building.
Since 2021, 32 people have been injured in reported crashes here.
Against numbered streets, traffic safety comes in at 66, with infrastructure at 28. That 28 on infrastructure puts 159 Street in the weaker half of numbered streets. Measured against numbered streets, cleanliness sits at 40 and parking at 39. Food nearby ranks 72 and transit 18, both against every street in the city rather than inside the band. 159 Street ranks 97 on tree cover, the best of its three citywide measures. The band those ranks are drawn from holds about 990 numbered streets.
Housing is where 159 Street ranks best against numbered streets, at 69.
About 4% of the 1,511 homes on file are rent-stabilized, 53 homes in all.
Scores are built from 311 complaints, HPD violations, NYPD crash records, NYPD felony complaint records, MTA stop locations, DOHMH food permits, and the street tree census, divided by the homes and businesses on the street, updated weekly. Read the scoring method or the data sources.
Nearest streets in Queens
- Union Hall Street, Queens
- 108 Drive, Queens
- Yates Road, Queens
- 109 Drive, Queens
- 153 Street, Queens
- 154 Street, Queens
159 Street runs through Murray Hill, East Flushing and South Jamaica, where every scored street in the neighborhood is ranked beside it.
Every scored street in Queens, the citywide rankings of all 5,700+ graded streets, or Queens vs Brooklyn: How the Two Boroughs Score (2026 Data).