Survey: Are streets safe for Glens Falls students?
GLENS FALLS, N.Y. (NEWS10) - Glens Falls's middle and high schools have a traffic problem. the city school district is looking to make things safer at streets and crossings connecting the Quade Street school campus to the student body - which almost entirely makes its way to school by foot.
This week, the district has put out a survey to get a better handle on the traffic safety topic. Created in collaboration with the city of Glens Falls and the Adirondack/Glens Falls Transportation Council, the survey asks residents who bring their middle and high school-aged kids to school to share the state of traffic safety as they see it. The survey includes an interactive map, letting users identify the exact place where traffic has been seen as hazardous.
Like many city schools, Glens Falls' middle/high school campus is connected to many streets. The campus is directly bordered by Sherman Avenue, Quade Street, Grant Avenue and Clayton Avenue. Plenty of other neighborhood streets find their ends at one of those four. Sherman Avenue connects to Glen Street, acting as an artery that many use to get between downtown Glens Falls and the Northway.
As generations of students pass through Glens Falls' middle and high schools, the conversation around traffic isn't new. The Adirondack/Glens Falls Transportation Council worked with consulting firm Resource Systems Group, Inc. to perform a study of school-adjacent traffic in 2012. That work came at a time when the district tried blocking off a block of Quade Street in front of the high school in order to create a new artery through which students and faculty could pass on foot. While effective, the idea didn't stop some drivers from compromising the safe zone - putting anyone crossing at immediate risk.
"GFSD is a walking school district," writes the district in the parameters for the school's current safety project. "No busing or transportation services are provided to students without special needs or outside of school‐sponsored events that require group travel, such as athletic competitions. Preserving and enhancing safe, non‐motorized access to the schools is the top priority of this analysis. And while the previous RSG report included a number of conceptual physical changes to access that would have implemented new access drives at the expense of existing greenspace, the focus of this effort will be on optimizing the existing surface transportation components for enhanced safety and conflict reduction."
The survey is just one early step in a long process ahead. The district has yet to formally lay out a scope of work to change the traffic situation around the school buildings. It has hopes, though, including public engagement and workshops; evaluation of pedestrian safety along each main street used by students to access campus; and identification of solutions, as well as funding opportunities for road, paving, and signage work as needed.