Give the MMTSSSC A Piece of Your Mind

[consularrider]

I do like that Washington-Lee HS appears to have doubled the bike racks on the Stafford side. I locked up right before school started last week and when I came out about 8:30, all the racks were still full!

The Washington Blvd bike lanes near Swanson MS are only about a year old. That said, there is a problem at just about every school with double parking to drop kids off.

[rcannon100]

Schools are a “Traffic law free zone” in Arlington. What parents do near school is just frightening. My kids are now in high school. At every level there has been an incident. At every level there has been begging for enforcement. I think at elementary school after an incident an officer showed up for a couple of days. That was it.

All I can do its use it as a teaching moment for my teenagers: “See, junior: there are the real scofflaws” Actually what I teach them is never ever to trust anyone else on the road; watch and watch and watch and watch (as another parent drives the wrong way down the one way road along the side of Washington-Lee HS).

[DaveK]

@rcannon100 46145 wrote:

Schools are a “Traffic law free zone” in Arlington. What parents do near school is just frightening.

I think you can safely strike “in Arlington” from this statement. I have never seen as insane a vortex of bad decisions as the streets immediately surrounding a school at dropoff or pickup. It’s always the parents dropping off or picking up that engage in wildly unsafe and inappropriate driving behaviors. They will argue that it’s not safe to let their kids walk or bike to school, then they’ll promptly turn the street outside their kid’s school into Thunderdome.

[dasgeh]

@DaveK 46194 wrote:

I think you can safely strike “in Arlington” from this statement. I have never seen as insane a vortex of bad decisions as the streets immediately surrounding a school at dropoff or pickup. It’s always the parents dropping off or picking up that engage in wildly unsafe and inappropriate driving behaviors. They will argue that it’s not safe to let their kids walk or bike to school, then they’ll promptly turn the street outside their kid’s school into Thunderdome.

Sadly, I agree. So… does anyone have suggestions? Has anyone seen examples of schools that manage this well?

Thanks!

[dasgeh]

Crowdsourcing a homework assignment:

If you could ask the police department anything about their relationship to transportation and schools, what would you ask?

[mstone]

@dasgeh 46693 wrote:

Crowdsourcing a homework assignment:

If you could ask the police department anything about their relationship to transportation and schools, what would you ask?

Why they don’t prioritize speed limit and aggressive driver enforcement during schoolbus hours. And ticketing parents who drive like jackasses when dropping off their kids.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@mstone 46705 wrote:

Why they don’t prioritize speed limit and aggressive driver enforcement during schoolbus hours. And ticketing crazy commuters in school zones and parents who drive like jackasses when dropping off their kids.

This. Although I suspect the answer is “HOV enforcement is more lucrative.”

[mstone]

While I certainly support ticketing crazy commuters at all times, behavior on the road tends toward a social norm and the parents should be the ones setting the tone for the commuters to pick up on. When they don’t (and they do not far too often) then the police should help reset the norm by calling out the dangerous behaviors in an unambiguous and highly public way. Instead, they are complicit in turning school zones into frogger boards, and letting the socialized norm become “well, the outside is too dangerous for kids”.

[dasgeh]

@americancyclo 62970 wrote:

I passed by a high school this morning and there were two giant electronic signs, a police officer and two crossing guards to remind drivers that pedestrians have right of way in the crosswalk and to NOT run over children.

Over on the missed connection thread, we’ve been discussion the impact of school traffic on our cycling. The MMTSSSC, that amazingly awesome committee created by the Arlington School Board to make recommendations about school-related transportation, deals with just this subject. AND there is an open seat for a “community” member (someone without kids attending APS schools — that includes people like me with kids too young for school, people without kids, people with kids too old for school, and (I believe) people with kids in non-APS schools). I believe you have to live in Arlington (though the charge just says “represent the Arlington community).

Bonus: the committee is scheduled to expire after the next report in June 2014.

PM me if you’d like more info. We could use more of your voices on the committee.

[Author]

Posts