Traffic troubles abound at PS 24

Early Thursday morning, Spuyten Duyvil School (P.S. 24) Parent Association member Cliff Stanton and Co-president Farrah Rubin stood to the side of Independence Avenue, fliers in hand. 

“This guy just did a U-turn right in front of me,” said Mr. Stanton, exasperated. 

The fliers are part of an ongoing campaign by P.S. 24 to improve traffic safety at drop off and dismissal times at the school. Mr. Stanton says parents who double and triple park on Independence Avenue and engage in dangerous maneuvers like the aforementioned U-turn put both the school’s students and parents at risk. 

Traffic concerns have been an ongoing issue for P.S. 24’s PA, which years ago successfully lobbied for a speed bump in front of the school, and has since implemented a drop-off system in which parents can drive through a coned area at the school on 236th Street and drop their children directly in front of the school or the Annex entrance.

“We’ve set it up in such a way that it really is a system that works,” said Mr. Stanton.

Along with Ms. Rubin, P.S. 24’s Principal Donna Connelly and PA Co-president Tracy Shelton, Mr. Stanton has written a letter outlining drop-off and pick-up traffic rules, which he says the school has sent out to parents twice a year for the past few years, to little avail. 

Many parents find it easier to double park on Independence, often leaving their cars unattended as they walk their children into school. 

On Thursday morning, one parent parked next to a row of already-parked cars as she waited for her son to exit the van with his science project; another idled as she waited for her child to finish some last-minute homework. 

“We just want to remind them in a nice way, look, you guys are the ones people are complaining about,” said Ms. Rubin.

Mr. Stanton and Ms. Rubin have been placing the letter addressing traffic concerns on the windows of unattended cars along the side of the road near the school.

Their campaign comes in the wake of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to end double-parking in the city - part of his Vision Zero plan designed to decrease the number of traffic fatalities in the city.