Editor's note: The above interactive map displays the neighborhood where the bus stop dispute is taking place. The two circles denote the approximate location of the homes where the bus-takers live. A square sits atop Palmer Avenue and Purdue Street, which is where Joan Kravcak is requesting the bus stop be moved. The triangle marks the location of the current bus stop at Palmer Avenue and Hammond Street. A grey line marks the bus' daily route through the neighborhood.

Palmer Avenue residents Joan Kravchak and Julie Capriotti have one goal: get a bus stop moved one block.

The reason: the women don’t want the three elementary-aged children to have to board and disembark the yellow school bus across the street from several abandoned homes.

“Safety really is my whole thing,” Kravchak said. “They’re 3 little girls waiting for the bus at the corner.”

Capriotti said the empty houses across from the bus stop have become become a stopping point for homeless in the past.

“I had to call the police once because I thought someone was in there,” she added.

Both women said weeds and waist high grass filled the properties until just a few weeks ago.

Kravchak, a grandmother with one granddaughter at the stop, and Capriotti, who has two young girls who use the stop, both have requested the district move the stop down a block to Palmer Avenue and Purdue Street. The proposed stop is between both the women’s homes and away from the derelict dwellings.

The Bristol Township School District’s transportation department has denied the requested move several times, according to Kravchak.

The district told Patch on Monday that they receive numerous request for stop changes and sometimes deny those requests.

“We’re not asking [the bus driver] to go a different way. He already goes right by our houses,” Kravchak said.

District Public Relations Director Eileen Kelliher said Kravchak’s 11-year-old granddaughter is also authorized to used a bus stop at Palmer Avenue and and Coates Street. That stop is about a 1/10th of a mile closer to Kravchak’s house.

For that reason, the district said Monday that adding a bus stop is “unnecessary.”

The district has faced numerous busing problems during the 2012-13 school year. School board officials recently said most of the issues have been resolved.

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