Mar

Valencia School Drop off and Pick up Problems

I cannot say that this issue is localized to Valencia California Schools. I have worked a Traffic Safety Unit with Valley Traffic Division, for 5 years when I was on Motors. I was a complaint officer that worked in close relationship with a few of the Local Los Angeles Council Offices. My responsibility was to take calls and attend community meetings with community members and work on their traffic complaints. I did so in Van Nuys, North Hollywood, Studio City, West Valley, and throughout other cities in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

I was frequently summoned to the local schools that had a horrific traffic pattern problem. With parents in a hurry, dropping off their children on the wrong side of the street, double parking, and driving too fast after the package was delivered. These problems could result, and have before, in the hurting or worse, death of children. That is not too far fetched because I have witnessed this tragedy first hand at one of those local schools that had traffic issues.

What is the solution? I drop my eldest off at Rio Norte Junior High in the mornings, I leave the house at 0700hrs, and want him there early, so I can get a jump on our business. There is not much traffic at that time, but sometimes I run late or he does not get up as I would like, therefore it causes me to drop him later, approaching the 0730 mark. Now the school bell rings around 0740hrs. From 0730 hours to 0740hrs, the traffic seems to back up a bit.

Pick up is another issue, due to the morning times and the parents not all coming to release their children all at the same time, it is not very much of an issue. At the Pick Up times at any of the southland Schools, you will see something completely different. Usually there is only one time where the school is released. Even if there were more than one time, that split would not be sufficient to control the flow of traffic. At Rio Norte, the end of the day comes at 1400hrs. Traffic starts building about 15 minutes until that time each school day. Now the drive way is in a horse shoe configuration, and becomes one way during drop off and pick up. The rest of the school day it is two way. During drop off and pick up there are two lines of traffic, an interior and exterior line and there are cones that separate the two lines. You enter in a counter-clock wise pattern on the north driveway and exit on the south driveway.

If you are on the exterior side, you drop off your child and the crossing guard stops traffic intermittently and get your children safely to the interior side of the horse shoe where the school is located. In the PM there is a Sheriff’s Deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that does a great job in the controlling of traffic and keeping everyone honest. There are also a lot of other Educational folks that help with the safe crossing of children and traffic concerns and complaints, these Rio Norte Employees are FANTASTIC.

One of the issues with picking up in the afternoon is with the traffic blocking the city street that leads to the school grounds. Emergency vehicles and personnel would not be able to get to the other side of the school if folks during pick up are bending the rules and stopping on the city street. You must pass by and come around again to be in compliance.

What is the solution, try making 4 different times of school starting and ending, that would not work due to union issues and it would also be difficult to start that process. I cannot imagine how logistically that could be handled. With this particular school there are four sides that would work for drop off. I am wondering if all of the parents that were dropping off, would be issued a card with one of the first four letters of the Alphabet on it. A would correspond to the front, B, would be the north side, C, would be the west side, and D would be the south side. Then those times with pick up and drop off might be reduced in the amount of vehicles that are occupying those streets. The problem with this suggestion is one of personnel. That would now take more people to work on all of those other sides of the school.

I suppose that the best issue is education and maybe some enforcement to keep everyone in check. When I was that complaint officer that I mentioned earlier, we used the three E’s of Traffic, Education, Enforcement, and Engineering to address traffic issues at schools. – CONNOR with HONOR