Dyker Heights Lights Tour Busses Defy Police Orders, Park Wherever They Want

Despite much effort and energy to quell the ever growing safety issue wrought by tour busses blocking traffic to ogle the Dyker Heights lights, uninformed, out-of-state busses continue to be a problem.

To dispel the issue this year, local police created a “tour bus parking only” zone along 86th Street to serve as a defined place to park. (After much protest from the community, the area reserved for bus parking was lessened.)

According to a resident on 86th Street and 11th Avenue, however, on the first weekend the new parking restrictions were being enforced, tour busses defied orders and continued to cause traffic problems beyond their reserved parking areas.

“These are tour busses letting people off to see the lights in Dyker Heights,” the resident specified of his photos, above, “problem is this isn’t the agreed upon drop off and pick up point for tour busses on 86th Street…this is up on 82nd.”

He went on to clarify that his main concern is safety, and the fact that, should he have an emergency and need to leave, or need emergency services to be called to his home, the tour busses would prevent him from leaving and the emergency vehicles from getting to him.

A police source acknowledge the problem, but clarified that the parking restrictions have significantly diminished the traffic issues. Still, said the source, some busses, especially those which are privately chartered and coming from out of state, have not done their research and don’t know where to go.

“The problem is there are so many busses coming in here we can’t control them. It’s hard for us to monitor the whole neighborhood,” he told us over the phone, noting that the issue has, “generally improved.”

Community Board 10 Manager Josephine Beckman agreed with the police source, telling us she’d visited the lights this weekend and, “thought the police plan was working extremely well.”

She also acknowledged the difficulty facing the NYPD of dealing with both the quantity of busses and the ones that aren’t familiar with the area.

“While the police reached out to all the known bus companies,” she said, “some are chartered privately, so it’s a bit challenging.”

As of this morning, she had not received any complaints from residents.