School Safety Plan Part 3: Minimizing the Impacts of School Traffic

This is an installment of an 8 part series on School Safety Plans.  The next portion will be posted next Monday.

This area of your plan requires working with the city engineering department and possibly hiring a consultant traffic engineer. The plan will analyze the operations of your driveways onto the public street system and the nearby public street intersections. You will need to work with your city’s engineering department if your plan is looking at changing any physical features such as sidewalks, signs, or traffic signals. Possible outcomes of this analysis may be:

• Installing signs per Chapter 7 of the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices which covers traffic control specific to school areas.Adding turn lanes.
• Changing stop sign configurations.
• Changing pavement markings.
• Banning certain turning maneuvers (to eliminate a “shortcut”).
• Adding a traffic signal.
• Changing the operation of a traffic signal.
• Constructing a roundabout.
• Constructing traffic calming measures such as speed bumps.
• Adding pedestrian ramps at intersections.
• Constructing trails or sidewalks.
• Building “bumpouts” to extend the sidewalks toward each other at intersections to shorten the crossing distance.

 

Comments

[Alvin Sarmiento]

Observing the surroundings that the school I volunteer work with, I find that there might need to be either a stop sign/stop light implemented a couple or so blocks from school. I observed students are walking more than the two blocks away from school. These need to be put to provide school safety for the students as cars drive faster than the required speed at the street.