Traffic calming around schools will not work because of non-calm parents, architect says: Roadshow
Q: Calming traffic on Leigh in front of Valley Christian Academy by taking out lanes? Has any city traffic planner spent any time near a school at pickup and dropoff times?
Schools are the worst traffic nightmares imaginable. Harried parents display absolutely no concern for the safety of others or themselves in their frenzy to deliver or pick up their precious cargo.
I’m an architect who has worked on a number of schools throughout the South Bay. Trying to accommodate pickup and drop-off circulation was often the most difficult design problem of all to solve. Frequently any design solution involved compromises.
There’s never enough room to accommodate the traffic flow that happens within one very specific and short amount of time. Almost always, traffic overflow impacts surrounding neighborhoods, and parents get very creative, and unsafe, in their choices of waiting areas or pickup and drop-off spots.
I used to commute daily on Leigh Avenue and am very familiar with the situation at both Valley Christian and neighboring Blackford Elementary. I thank God I’m not going through there anymore. I recently drove up Leigh and saw the revised striping in progress. It will be a huge mess, and I will avoid Leigh during dropoff and pickup times at all costs.
The solution is to get people out of cars. I’m sure city planners will point to all the bike lane striping as the way to encourage more biking.
As someone who has dealt with the parents of precious schoolchildren, I further guarantee there will be little to no increase in kids commuting to school on bikes. Those same parents responsible for all the traffic safety issues know only too well how unsafe school traffic is for bicyclists, but in their minds, the only unsafe drivers are the other guys and gals.
— Eugene Ely, San Jose
A: Interesting that these time-limited, high-volume traffic flows were one of the biggest school design problems … and I can imagine it.
Q: At the start of COVID, I began driving to work early (very early) in the morning. Traffic was light, but it was still hard for me to tolerate the bright lights on the other side of Interstate 80 and in my rear-view mirror.
I read somewhere that yellow lenses would help. I have no idea if there is really a scientific basis for it, but a pair of cheap sunglasses with yellow lenses made me a lot more comfortable on the freeway and the Bay Bridge
— Norm Vance, Berkeley
A: Other Roadshow readers have also recommended sunglasses with yellow lenses. It’s good to hear that they worked for you, too.
Look for Gary Richards at Facebook.com/mr.roadshow or contact him at mrroadshow@bayareanewsgroup.com.