To Whom It May Concern,

Every morning, the public school on 43rd Street and 14th Avenue (P.S. 164 Caesar Rodney School) creates a massive traffic headache, not only on that block but throughout the surrounding Boro Park neighborhood.

The process of unloading students from the school buses takes an extremely long time, and there is certainly room for improvement in how the drivers handle it. But the biggest problem is what happens when one bus is unloading and the others have nowhere to park.

Instead of unloading their passengers with their red flashing lights activated, where legally permitted, or circling the block and returning when space becomes available, the waiting buses simply remain in the middle of the street with their yellow warning lights flashing, bringing traffic to a complete standstill.

This can go on for nearly half an hour every single morning, right in the middle of the busiest rush-hour period. One blocked street quickly creates a chain reaction, with traffic backing up onto neighboring avenues and intersections. At that hour, every minute counts, and even a small obstruction can cause major delays throughout the neighborhood.

Nobody is questioning the importance of getting children to school safely. But safety and consideration for the surrounding neighborhood should go hand in hand. There must be a more organized and efficient way to coordinate the arrival and unloading of these buses without effectively shutting down an entire block every morning.

And let's not forget another important point: This is a public school funded by our tax dollars, even though we do not send our children to public school. We certainly have every right to speak up when a service funded in part by our own hard-earned money ends up creating daily hardships for us. Nobody is asking the school to stop operating, but taxpayers and neighborhood residents deserve some consideration, too.

I hope the school administration and transportation officials take this letter seriously and recognize that I am far from the only one raising this concern. Frustration over this daily traffic nightmare is widespread throughout the surrounding neighborhood, and residents deserve to see something done about it.

Shiffy T.