From the Times Ledger:Maspeth drivers want yellow buses busted.
Residents who attended a meeting with the 104th Precinct April 20 complained of school bus drivers who double- and sometimes triple-park outside PS 58 with impunity.
“It seems to me if you’re yellow, you’re sacred,” said resident Manny Caruana, who called on the officers to write more tickets. “This has been going on since the school opened.”
When the buses double- and triple-park outside the school, at 72-50 Grand Ave., they effectively narrow the road to 1 1/2 lanes of traffic, Caruana said, causing a dangerous situation. Cars often have to swerve into the opposite lane of traffic to get around the yellow vehicles.
And yet there is ample room along the avenue for the buses to park normally.
The only problem is that the spaces are often occupied by parents who are also determined to drop off or pick their kids despite its being illegal to park in front of the building during school hours.
“God forbid little Johnny should walk a block to school,” said another woman at the meeting. “I’ve always seen the handicapped bus double-parked because some mother is in the space.”
Last Thursday, lines of minivans along with an ice cream truck pulled into the spaces reserved for the school buses, forcing many to double park right beside the vehicles of parents.
43 comments:
The line of cars of waiting parents is a fact of life, this is what a parent does especially if you are unfortunate enough to send you kid to public schools - you want to make sure they get out of the building in one piece.
With over crowding, illegals, gangs and bullying - a child has much to navigate through these days - parents help provide a little safety that school officials simply cant.
parents these days coddle their children way too much. The get picked up from school and straight to the playstation. No wonder why children are obese.
The parents, school bus drivers and those pathetic teachers need to stop polluting and causing traffic jams. I live around the corner from this P.O.S. school and I see these stupid teachers, starting as early as 6 a.m. driving around like lunitics looking for spots. Or idiling there cars for hours. I just saw one fat fuck teacher park in front of the door, on 57th ave.. The doors wont open for awhile but she will sit in her car with it idiling and stuff her fat face. And the other stupid teachers will be illegally comming up mazeau st. and cutting illegally through the laundrymat. Maybe if the stupid prinicple would make it no parking around the whole school, then maybe these school buses wouldn't have to double park. And maybe if the lesbians at the 104th pct. would get over here and give out tickets to these parents, they may not triple park. Well we can thank Dizzy Lizzy for this! She is a useless P.O.S..
isn't it a shame that children can't go to schools in their own neighborhood? i say get rid of middle schools entirely make k-8 and then 9-12 like private schools. your then able to have children walk to schools in the zoned schools. growing up i went to public schools and it was nothing like it is today and I WALKED! city would save on MTA cards...
Maspeth drivers want yellow buses busted.
That's funny since they don't seem to be the real culprit. Maspeth drivers should want the parents taking up the bus parking spaces busted. Typical brainless knee jerk reaction.
Why? Do two wrongs make a right? It's not safe to double park a school bus and discharge passengers.
What do you propose the bus drivers do crappy? Take the kids back home? Drop them off blocks away? Could you imagine the parents outrage if their school buses were dropping kids off a block or two away and leaving them to walk unsupervised? Not to mention the legal liability if something happened to a kid during that walk.
It's not like there is parking for a bus anywhere else around anyway. If the designated loading zones are occupied by squatters, the bus drivers really have no choice but to double park. What else would you have them do??? I would like to hear your suggestion.
And if you can get someone there to enforce the traffic laws, then why shouldn't they enforce them against the people CAUSING the problem? Ticketing (and maybe towing) the parents parking illegally will fix the problem. Ticketing the buses will just generate more unjust revenue for the city and change nothing.
If these buses are discharging kids, what does it matter if the road is reduced to one lane anyway? The buses should have their flashing red lights on when discharging, and no one should be passing in either direction. Of course people are too self important to wait for a school bus with flashing lights, but they have no problem complaining about how THEY are being inconvenienced.
Why? Because the parents parking illegally are creating the situation, not the buses.
Look at the photo. The buses are the ones that double park next to each other. There are 2 entrances to the school. One should be designated for dropoffs from cars and the other from buses. As it is, Grand Ave is a 24-hour parking lot for buses.
By the way, it is legal to drop off in a no parking or no standing zone.
I'm not sure what that bus is doing in the photo, but it does not looked double parked. It is perpendicular to the parked bus. Maybe trying to make a turn? That photo clearly shows a car illegally parked in the bus zone, but does not clearly show any double parked buses. Even if the buses do double park next to each other, and I'm sure they do, it is not the fault of the bus drivers if there are not enough open spaces for the buses.
Your suggestion sounds sensible, but it is one that must be implemented on an administrative level by the school. It is not up to the bus drivers to decide where to drop kids off, they drop them off where they are instructed to. Ticketing the buses does nothing to change that.
What are your thoughts on targeting the parents parking illegally in the bus zone? Ticketing and booting or towing would be a big deterrent to this problem.
Back to my original sentiment. For neighborhood drivers to ignore the cause of the problem and complain that the buses should be the ones ticketed is pretty bone-headed, as it does nothing to help the problem.
Something tells me these parents are not discharging passengers, but parking to walk their kids to the door, or waiting for their kids to be dismissed. If they were stopping for a few seconds to drop off or pick up this wouldn't be an issue.
Even if it's legal, common sense should tell you that if your stopping is forcing the school bus to double park maybe it's not a decent thing to do.
I would still like to know what you think the driver of a school bus should do if they are dropping off or picking up kids and there is not an open space to park. That is the situation these drivers face, and ticketing them does not change that, or alleviate the traffic problem.
I think there should be a "no stopping" zone in front of the entrance, where the curb cutout is for the school buses and any parent there should get a ticket. This photo actually was not taken in front of the cutout, but in front of the schoolyard further down the street. And for you to say it's not the school buses, it's the parents, you really don't know the reality. I'm not saying the parents aren't to blame, but there are so many damn school buses that apparently they can't all fit in the cutout! If this is a school for local kids, why are there so damn many school buses?
You are conveniently avoiding my question.
Yes there may be too many buses, our schools are too crowded.
If you want to address the underlying problems (and you regularly do) and long term corrective suggestions that is great, but you can't ignore the immediate problem.
And no, I may not be familiar with that particular school, but it seems almost every elementary school has the same problem of parents unwilling to park legally and walk, instead opting to create traffic and hazardous conditions by parking illegally and double parking so they can pick up their precious child, without the slightest consideration for anyone else. I also realize this is a major through street without a convenient bypass so I do sympathize. But ticketing the school buses won't accomplish anything.
People here complain when cops write tickets, and theb they complain when they don't. You all allowed stuff like this to blossom by enabling such behavior, now live with it. Cry me a river.
I didn't avoid your question, I answered you quite directly.
"People here complain when cops write tickets, and theb they complain when they don't..."
Blah, blah, blah...no one here enabled shit. No one here ever said cops should stop writing tickets. Undeserved tickets where there is entrapment or lying involved, yes.
I would still like to know what you think the driver of a school bus should do if they are dropping off or picking up kids and there is not an open space to park.
I did not see any direct answer to that.
They should wait until another bus leaves and pull over to the curb.
"I think there should be a "no stopping" zone in front of the entrance, where the curb cutout is for the school buses and any parent there should get a ticket."
Some parents are willing to pay the cost of the ticket. From the article: “It’s my only option,” said one testy parent who pulled directly into the lane and hopped out of his car. “I can afford the ticket.”
Yes, they can afford an occasional ticket. A ticket everyday isn't going to be so affordable.
"They should wait until another bus leaves and pull over to the curb"
Wait where? They should pull into a spot and wait? Somehow that doesn't make sense. If there were spots available they wouldn't need to wait. Lined up buses are going to create traffic whether it is in front of the school or down the block.
Yes, that's right. There will be traffic either way, so it's best to address the safety concern. MTA buses that arrive at a bus stop together don't double park to discharge passengers (at least they aren't supposed to), one driver generally waits for the other one to pull out.
The people complaining don't sound concerned too about the kids getting on or off the bus. They are concerned with being inconvenienced by slow traffic and the "dangerous situation" of having to "swerve into the opposite lane of traffic"
Please. These are things we deal with with as drivers on a regular basis. No one should be "swerving" in a school zone or they are driving too fast to begin with. The claim is not even that traffic gets blocked, but that it has to squeeze past. Frankly slowing traffic to a crawl probably makes the street safer. There have been a few stories in the news of kids or parents being killed by speeding cars outside schools.
And the MTA buses barely pull over into the bus stop on busy streets, and regularly hold up traffic. And if someone is parked illegally in the bus stop they never wait, they simply stop in the traffic lane. I see it all the time.
You asked what a bus driver should do if other buses are in the lane. I told you. Of course, that answer wasn't good enough for you.
The truth is no one who lives near that school wanted it. It's created more quality of life problems for residents and if people can't get to work because a major artery is blocked, that's a problem. They have every right to complain. If it truly were a local school, we wouldn't have these problems. With the census showing that every neighborhood is racially integrated, the busing nonsense should stop.
The only reason the MTA buses dont double park next to each other is that people wouldnt be able to get out the back door.
Your answer was fine enough. The problem as it is described in the article will still be the same though. People will still be crying for parking tickets to be issued because of their dangerous swerving issue.
Not only that, but when I read this: "From Tuesday through Thursday, the school releases the children in two waves, but on Mondays and Fridays they are let loose all at once."
Let them out in 2 waves on Mon and Fri. Problem solved.
not solved, but better.
God forbid dropping kids off a block or two away and leaving them to walk !
Tell me about it
Why not roll these kids down the street like soccer balls?
Has anyone taken a good luck at these kids ?
A good 70% of them are overweight (no doubt uninsured) and headed for serious health problems !
When I was a kid I had to walk from Seneca and Decatur street to JHS 93 every day (2 miles uphill ?) sometimes in 6+ inches of snow.
There were so many kids walking to school on Forest ave it was perfectly safe.
These spoiled little brats and the stupid soccer mom parents with the 8MPG SUVs and 42 inch wastes blocking traffic cant handle a 2 block walk ?
The city is looking at a huge epidemic of obesity, juvenile diabetes and heat disease.
Who's is going to pay for this ?
-Joe
I have an answer for that annoying person how about not busing in children from other communities! Parents should take transit or freaking walk! Two accidents on grand Ave due to the obstruction of these buses and parents.
I say deport all those anchor babbies and we wouldn't need any stinkin buses....
Problem solved!
True, these buss's are a good 80% full of anchor baby's.
Why are they being bussed into Maspeth ?
Almost every one of them is grossly overweight whats up with that ??
Where are these people getting all that $$$ to buy food? What the hell are they eating, candy, beer crispy cream donuts by the dozen ? Some of these anchor baby pre-teens must be 5'1 and already weigh over 160-200 lbs.
I left the Ridgewood library in shock a wile back.
Coughing sneezing people were looking at Polish porn on computers just as 100's of "cattle" exited JHS93 flooding the street no-place to run. Buses, cars, road rage, people yelling it was like being in hell.
I remember Times Square, entering the midtown tunnel being better then that at 5PM
If you think the traffic and parking situation on Grand Avenue is bad now, wait until the High School opens. You'll have another bunch of teachers looking for parking and Grand Avenue and 57th Avenue will be at a standstill. Don't forget that upper classmen in high school drive too. This is just poor planning on the part of the city government and department of education. There are too many schools in a small area with only a 2 lane traffic route.
this busing of out of town children (5-8 miles away) has been done for 20 years, at P.S.130 Q in Bayside at F.Lewis Blvd/42 avenue.
the 300 k-3 pupils use the blvd. entrance,while the special education school(50 pupils/25 buses),use the 42 avenue entrance.
the local pupil residents, across from the school, are bused away to schools a one mile distance. ?
the same traffic blockade occurs here.
is not this wasted tax money and insane progressive leadership at the school district 25/26 and D.O.E offices?
The problem can easily be solved. Eliminate BUSING!!!!! Schools have been intergrated for years, (the reason why busses were started) and children should be able to go attend schools in their own district. Simple result and no more complaints. This goes for every damned school. Now remember, DOE is continuing to build new schools everyday, everywhere, regardless of where or how inconveinent it is to the community. You can't win.
As long as the "No Child Left Behind Act" remains on the books you will have kids riding buses like this.
Ok folks - The real culprit is that these schools are all bunched together with more to come shortly and no accommodation has been made for school buses and cars driven by parents. So enforcement by the NYPD is the key here. NYPD can direct buses, ticket illegal cars and double parked buses. They are there as well to insure the safety of the students and teachers. Enforcement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FOLLOW THE MONEY FOR THE BUS COMPANY CONTRACTS WITH THE D.O.E.
$25 to 35 per pupil per one way ride equals $70/per day X 180 days, for one pupil body.
there are 1.1.million pupils in n.y.c.
do the math. do you think the local politicians are going to give up these campaign donations from the bus companies and unions easily ?
I live four blocks from this school and walk my child; however, many parents living on my block drive their kids. No wonder so many of them are obese!
I am amazed at the number of comments calling the teachers and parents "stupid" and then they mix up "your" with "you're" and "there" and "their" and "they're". A little ignorance goes a long way.
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