More Kids Who Won’t Be Walking to School
The reason: a collapsed pedestrian bridge.
I was puzzled by this last sentence:
A new bridge, if they decide to build one, could cost as much as 1-million dollars. Gugel says simply installing a traffic light may not be an option because Kearney Street has been designated a barrier street which means students shouldn’t cross it.
Somehow a “barrier street” doesn’t have the ring of something found in the MUTCD, but I may be wrong; any street, in any case, is a barrier with enough car traffic on it. But certainly street designations can be changed?
[UPDATE: See comment below for how the school defines ‘barrier street.’ The website also notes: “Springfield has a number of streets with an exceptionally high volume of traffic. In order to prevent students from having to cross the busiest street, SPS provides free transportation to students who live less than 1.5 miles from school in areas where they must cross a barrier street.”
This reads like something of a fait accompli: These streets are too busy, large, fast, etc. to allow students to walk, so they must be driven (by parents or the school), thus increasing traffic on those busy roads. But one wonders what the larger planning decisions were vis a vis the school siting and the classification of those roads (and one hopes that school is not separated from residences by an interstate highway!). Surely children could cross with relatively, with a road diet, slower speeds, a HAWK crossing or crossing guard?]
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 at 8:12 am and is filed under Commuting, Congestion, Pedestrians, Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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