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SUSD looks to carpooling to improve traffic problem
By Leigh Ann Maze
Since school busing stopped in 1982, the Saratoga Union School District's traffic situation has gone from bad to worse, according to parents and employees. District board members, individuals and Altrans, a private, grant-funded company, are working to find transportation alternatives to reduce the congestion.
"The board and I have put our heads together to build on what Altrans has been doing," said Brigitte Ballingall, parent and school liaison for the public safety commission. "The City Council also feels the traffic situation in general--and especially around the schools--has become critical."
According to SUSD board president Cindy Ruby, Ballingall and the school board in February plan to kick off a carpool campaign. "Altrans initiated it, and now we're trying to make it an even stronger program," Ruby said. The carpool plan is still in the works, and board members are considering options and strategies, she said.
Proposition 13, passed in 1978, reduced the amount of local money available to schools. The proposition, combined with the increasing costs of school-busing programs, forced the SUSD to eliminate its school buses, as did many other public school districts across the state.
Altrans began working with the SUSD in early 1997, implementing a trip-reduction program.
In a letter to Michael Murphy of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District dated June 1, SUSD Superintendent Mary Gardner wrote: "This program not only will better manage our students' transportation demands, mitigate traffic congestion and reduce automobile emissions, but it will also educate students about air quality and the environment."
After two years of planning, Altrans' trip-reduction program went into effect at the beginning of this school year. In August, 2,390 letters were sent to SUSD parents in back-to-school packets asking them whether they would like to participate. Altrans also spent time at each school handing out fliers and talking with parents as they picked their children up from school.
About 29 percent of parents responded to the letters and sent their commute information to Altrans. Using a computer mapping program (GIS), Altrans sorted the parent information and provided each interested party with a free match-list of neighbors with whom they might carpool easily.
According to Altrans President Stephen Blaylock, the organization receives calls daily from individual parents requesting match-lists. "We don't have any measure now of how effective it's been," Ruby said of Altrans' program, "but we know it's made a big difference, especially at Saratoga School."
Beginning in the spring, Altrans will survey parents who received match-lists to assess the effectiveness of the program. Altrans expects to report the results of the parent survey to the school district and the city of Saratoga before the end of this school year.
According to Ballingall, the school district also is looking into busing children to school again, possibly as early as next year. A new busing program most likely would have to be subsidized by parents because the necessary funds are not available from the city or the school district. The district is looking into the cost and feasibility of busing and has held frequent meetings to discuss it. The district will hire a traffic consultant shortly.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
