UPS Trucks — Sometimes 20 At A Time — Are Clogging This Park Slope Street, Neighbors Say

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Bob Levine started noticing something odd a few years ago on his Park Slope block. A handful of UPS trucks, sometimes as many as 20, would linger on his street for a few minutes before driving off.

Levine lives on Ninth Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and says the trucks line both sides of the street, blocking parking spaces and bike lanes while creating a traffic jam on one of the neighborhoods largest roads.

"It gets to the point where there’s one lane in the middle of it, and traffic going one direction has to wait until the traffic going the other way gets through," said Levine, the president of the Ninth Street 500 Block Association and member of Community Board 6.

"It’s a real pain."

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Levine said he isn't sure what the drivers are doing.

"They seem to either just sit and talk to each other, or exchange packages. They’re probably rerouting packages to make it easy for themselves," he said.

"I don’t know if they’re sitting and eating but they’re sitting and talking. I don’t know if it’s a lunch break or whatever it is."

One of Levine's hunches proved to be true.

UPS does, indeed, use the road as a drop-off location to swap packages with each other. But City Councilman Brad Lander's office said it is working with UPS to find a different location after residents voiced their complaints.

"After being contacted, Council Member Lander’s office reached out and notified UPS on the issue," Whit Hu, a spokeswoman for Lander, told Patch. "They’re currently working with UPS to find an alternative, more suitable location."

Kim Krebs, a spokeswoman for UPS, said the road was initially chosen because it is easily accessible and a "midpoint" in the neighborhood.

But, Krebs assured Patch, "All the drivers who cover routes in the area have been spoken to and will designate a different meeting point that is not as residential or congested."

The main road also services firetrucks rushing down the slope from a station around the corner and ambulances going to New York Methodist Hospital. And when the UPS trucks are there, city buses can barely get through the traffic jam and are forced to straddle the middle of the road.

Levine said he sees the trucks gathering "at least every other week." Sometimes it's "just six or seven trucks" but other times it's "up to 18 to 20."

He last saw them May 3 when he came outside to investigate a noise that turned out a chunk of an apartment building that crashed to the ground across the street from him.

Community Board 6 said it's aware of the situation and has made phone calls to "various places." A board representative said these places are "always very apologetic and say that it won’t happen again."

But since the board is just advisory, "That’s all we can do, that’s the extent of what’s happening."

Photos courtesy of Bob Levine