Country Clubbers are enraged.
Residents of Stadium Avenue are so aggravated over the new bus route that they’re now logging the number of buses that go by each hour.
The new Bx8 route is not what residents bargained for when they bought their gorgeous homes years back, and one retired couple, Albert and Clara LaPietra, of Stadium Avenue between Country Club Road and Polo Place, are keeping a log of how many buses go past their house, how often, and the number of passengers on board.
On Wednesday, July 7 from 5:45 p.m. until 10 p.m., a little over four hours, Clara LaPietra logged 156 specific times during the period when a bus passed their home, and the bus service doesn’t stop running until midnight. LaPietra said that she can’t sleep and is woken up early in the morning because of the noises from the hydraulic brakes and revving of bus engines.
“We spent so much money to be in a house that was nice and quiet, and to keep it clean, and this is what happens,” LaPietra said. “My husband started counting first. He told me that there must be more than 100 buses a day. I thought he was crazy. It turns out that he is right.”
LaPietra’s neighbor, Benny Greco, said that the sounds coming from the bus are unbearable. This includes noise from a bus’s muffler, hydraulic lift, air brakes, and pollution control system. He also said that with just one or two passengers on most of the passing busses, it reminds him, “more of a limousine service than a New York City bus.”
“I wish that they would take the same route as the old Bx14 bus,” LaPietra said. “There is just a lot of noise in the morning.”
Country Club Civic Association president Marcia Pavlica said the bus problems are also evident on a stretch of Dean Avenue between Layton and Stadium avenues. The roadway is so narrow that many times, a bus and car headed in opposite directions cannot pass each other. When the two buses meet each other on the narrow street, they begin honking, each wanting the other to move over so the other can go through. This causes noise pollution, she said.
“On a little street like Dean Avenue, where the houses are close to the street, the sound of the buses is really impacting the people there. It is right in their faces,” Pavlica said. “Residents of Dean and Stadium avenues are drawing up petitions and logging the amount of times the buses pass on their streets.”
Pavlica said she was especially frustrated that the MTA did not release the stops on the new Bx8 and the schedule of buses well enough in advance of when the changes were made.
“They are basically telling the public to be damned,” she said.
