Plans to address the expected traffic associated with the coming reopening of North School are moving closer to reality, with the unveiling of recommendations that officials will vote on early next year.
The recommended improvements are part of the North School Traffic Management Plan, which city and district officials agreed to create after the contentious approval process for North’s planning documents earlier this year. Most of the fixes called for in the plan would take place off school grounds, and the plan will ultimately be voted on by elected officials from both the city and school district.
The recommendations, unveiled in a meeting Tuesday night, are divided into those likely to take place before the school opens and others that could be implemented later, if at all. Among the notable short-term traffic-calming measures are a pedestrian path through the southern edge of Valley Park, which would allow students to enter the North campus from the east, and a proposal to turn 26th Street, which runs on the campus’ northern edge, into a one-way street. The city would also prohibit left turns from Valley Drive onto 25th Street and 24th Place during pick-up and drop-off hours, which would discourage people approaching North to drive through the narrow, winding streets southeast of the campus.
HBCSD Superintendent Pat Escalante said that the recommendations, forged from consultations with city staff, a resident stakeholder group, and a previous public meeting, shared a common theme.
“We want to look at every single thing we can maneuver to push traffic out of that neighborhood,” Escalante told attendees at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Robert Fortunato, a member of the stakeholder group that helped gather public opinion for the plan, agreed that the meetings made it clear that the focus was on minimizing congestion in the neighborhood surrounding the school. Fortunato said that meant looking not just at ways to make the flow of cars more orderly, but to reduce the share of trips to school made in cars. Along with physical installations like street signs and speed bumps, the stakeholder group has been exploring expanding the “walking school bus” network, as well as an electric trolley to ferry students to the campus.
“We’re not all going to drive our kids to school. It doesn’t work,” Fortunato said.
Demolition at the North campus began in October, and the site is now undergoing grading. Construction will be completed by December 2020 and the campus will open in January 2021, when it will be used as a “swing school” while View School undergoes a 15-month modernization, before North eventually serves its target population of third and fourth grades.
Leeanne Singleton, an environmental analyst with the city of Hermosa Beach, said Tuesday night that the traffic plan will come before the city’s public works commission in February, and before the City Council and the city school district’s Board of Education in March.
