After a crossing guard was struck while escorting children across 125th Street and 23rd Avenue, PS 29Q students and community members asked New York City for a traffic signal or other safety measures at the intersection. The city has rejected the request for a third time, leaving families asking why DOT chose other nearby intersections for safety measures instead.
The crossing guard, 47 years old at the time, was escorting children through the intersection at 8 a.m. in March 2025 when a car struck her, according to a police report cited by the New York Post. She sustained injuries to her neck, forehead and knee. The Post reported that both police and Queens City Council Member Vickie Paladino said she continues to suffer trauma from the collision.
After the crash, PS 29Q requested a stoplight, a four-way stop sign or speed bumps at the intersection. The city determined that it did not need additional safety measures there and instead installed a four-way stop sign one block east. Paladino said the sign had not curbed speeding, according to the Post.
Students Took Their Safety Concerns to DOT
PS 29Q students sent letters to the Department of Transportation seeking measures to slow traffic. One student wrote that cars were frequently speeding and endangering lives, and warned that another accident could happen if the city did not act, according to the Post. Paladino said the student-led campaign also included phone calls and 311 reports.
In a social media post last week, Paladino criticized the city for not providing the safety measures the school sought, the Post reported. She has also criticized the city's denials of requests for a multi-way stop sign, speed hump and traffic signal at the intersection.
What the City Says It Has Done Instead
A DOT spokesperson told the Post that the department reviewed traffic and pedestrian volumes around the school and identified two other intersections as suitable for speed-reduction measures. The city installed an all-way stop sign at 25th Avenue and 126th Street in 2025, following an earlier all-way stop installed one block north on the same street in 2021.
DOT said two all-way stop signs were recently installed around the school in response to community requests and that the agency will continue working with communities to improve street safety, according to the Post's reporting. Citywide, the default speed limit has been set at 25 mph since November 2014 unless a street is otherwise signed, according to Vision Zero View. DOT also says it conducts traffic-safety outreach at schools across the five boroughs using age-appropriate materials, and describes speed humps as raised sections of roadway designed to slow vehicles down.
A Similar Fight Played Out Nearby
PS 29Q's dispute follows a years-long push for traffic controls in the same stretch of College Point. The Queens Chronicle reported that the city planned to install all-way stop signs at three intersections near local schools, including one at 126th Street and 23rd Avenue by PS 29, after parents and officials pressed for them. A former council staffer told the paper that officials knew a stop sign would be necessary near MS 379 as far back as 2018, when the school opened its first class, as reported by Queens Chronicle.
Local officials sent a letter to the DOT commissioner in November 2020 after parents organized around the safety concerns, the Chronicle reported. At the time, the DOT said the new signs would go in within two weeks, though an exact date had not been set, and a department spokesperson said the agency was separately studying the corner of 15th Avenue and 125th Street. The Mayor's Office has said the city has lowered speed limits at just over 100 locations since Sammy's Law passed in spring 2024, including a slow zone in each borough, as part of a broader School Slow Zone expansion effort.
What Speed Cameras Have Shown
In its 2024 report, the NYC Department of Transportation said daily violations at speed-camera locations had fallen 94 percent since the program began in 2014. The report also said locations where cameras were installed in 2022 had 14 percent fewer injuries and fatalities between 2021 and 2023 than control corridors without cameras. Those citywide findings do not establish whether a camera would be installed at PS 29Q.
