Saratoga, California Since
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Traffic safety near Saratoga schools an issue of concern By Kate Carter With a common goal of improving traffic problems around Blue Hills Elementary School, the city of Saratoga and the Cupertino Union School District are making a joint effort that could become a model for the future. City staff, council members, and district and school officials met for the third time June 27 - and the first time with the community - to develop plans to address the situation. Public safety commissioner Brigitte Ballingall, who chairs the team, said that the meeting, and the effort, are the initial try in a system of involving everyone to address school traffic safety in Saratoga. "This is really the first time where we've invited everyone from the community," she said. "What's really significant about this is that this is really the first time that the schools and the city began to be on the same page." Safety around schools has been a concern for Ballingall since she started serving on the commission four years ago. Since then, the city has created the Saratoga City Schools Transportation Task Force and a neighborhood traffic management plan. In the past year or so, however, the city - with Ballingall and other commission members Isabelle Tennenbaum and Jim Shindler - has been trying to meld the two programs into one, to create school traffic-calming approaches that work for everyone. Some projects are already complete or underway, such as traffic calming at Saratoga and Marshall elementary schools. But in those cases, not everyone was involved in the plans' development, Ballingall said. That's different this time and, if successful, this new approach is how the city will go after traffic problems at all its schools. There is really no school in Saratoga that doesn't have some level of traffic or parking congestion, particularly at school start and dismissal times. Blue Hills has a healthy dose of both of those problems that have been going on "forever," Ballingall said, and for which neighbors are seeking relief. The K-6 school has nearly 500 students, most of whom arrive and are picked up in cars. That creates enormous congestion, parking and safety problems in the surrounding neighborhood, Ballingall said. Cars heading to the main entrance on De Sanka Avenue back up into the intersection with Sea Gull Way. Drivers park in red zones on Goleta Avenue, in front of driveways and mailboxes or even in driveways, then get out to walk their children onto campus. "People are parking, walking, and then staying and talking," Ballingall said. They are also making illegal U-turns in the middle of the street, turning in driveways and speeding down adjacent streets. That is a safety concern when some parents park across the street from the school and then walk their children across the street, directly into the fray. "When parents are frustrated, they do stupid things," Ballingall said. And the school's own drop-off, pickup system is monitored by only one volunteer. "The administration will say that it's better than it's ever been, and that's true," she said. But the neighbors would like to see something in place that works even better. Nearby neighbors had been expressing their frustration to the city and were asked for their opinions and recommendations in writing. Those suggestions were then reviewed in meetings held earlier this year by city and district personnel. On June 27, neighbors got another chance to verbally state their concerns. In the meetings, the team has been drafting a list of brainstormed solutions to make traffic around the school flow more "logically," Ballingall said. The solutions are arranged in three tiers, sorted by magnitude. The first priority tier includes improvements that can be achieved by merely changing behavior and minor signage, to better use what advantages the school already has, like a parking lot and school frontage. Some suggestions include restricting parking during drop-off and pickup hours, removing the red striping along some of Goleta Avenue so that more people will approach the school there, increasing supervision so that more parents will just drop off their children and leave, and adding more traffic enforcement. Second-level options include making it possible for a future bike path by the adjacent park to be extended to the school's entrance and encouraging more people to walk to school, as well as adding more sidewalks. Other possibilities for further in the future include expanding the size of the school's parking lot, which is currently large enough only for school staff, and making a drop-off indentation in the sidewalk in front of the school. Rick Hausman, the district's assistant superintendent for business services, has been involved in the process from the beginning. He said that the meetings have been cooperative, with everyone trying to find ways to better lead parents through the challenge of safely and efficiently dropping off and picking up their children. "Everybody's interested in solving this problem," Hausman said. "We've all been working to that end, in a way that's cost-effective. We're very optimistic that things identified in phases one and two will create enough modification of patterns that they will enhance safety and minimize traffic jams." Neighbors will get to meet with officials again Aug. 12 at 7 p.m. at the senior center behind city hall, along Allendale Avenue. At that meeting, Ballingall said, the group will finalize the plan to improve Blue Hills' situation. After that, all that remains is to make the plan happen. Some of the less-intrusive changes could begin this school year. The school district is looking for ways to possibly fund more intensive improvements further on, but that would probably not be for two or three years, Hausman said. In addition, any changes will probably take about a year to result in significant improvements, he said. |
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