With concerns that reopening North School could lead to periodic traffic jams in the area, some residents are floating alternative locations to pick up and drop-off students as a potential solution.
Last week, the Hermosa Beach City School District voted to invite new comments on the traffic and transportation section of the EIR for North School. Although the district used methodology called for in the city’s General Plan, comment letters, including one from the city, said the analysis did not adequately account for the impacts of traffic associated with pick-ups and drop-offs.
The decision will delay any construction by about five months, district officials said. But an attorney with the district said that it was “a good idea” to redo some of the analysis in order to respond to resident comments.
Among the most regular faces in providing comments on the plan has been resident Scott Davey. The campaign over Measure S, which is providing funds for the proposed North reconstruction as well as upgrades to the View and Valley campuses, was polarized, and voices that supported the bond measure but raised issues about implementation at North were occasionally drowned out. But after the draft Environmental Impact Report was released in November, Davey said he spoke to dozens of residents in the area, and found that most of those in the region supported the school going in, but had concerns about traffic that they did not feel were being adequately addressed in the impact report.
“I’m not going to have a kid going through, but I think it’s going to be a positive thing for the community,” Davey said. “Most people felt that way. Only a few were, like, ‘No way.’”So Davey went to Valley School during drop-off times and counted cars. He noted the congestion that seemed to peak about 8 a.m., but also noticed that the volume of cars did not correspond to the number of students at the campus. Some of the students, especially older kids, were walking or biking. And, after speaking with parents at the school, he learned many of them were dropping their kids off at other locations, including the Vons parking lot on 16th Street, and at the City Hall parking lot on the other side of Pier Avenue.
At North, current plans call for a drop-off lane on 25th Street, which some residents have said will quickly become clogged during pick-up and drop-off times. Davey, who previously worked in municipal planning, tallied offsite parking opportunities on the north and east sides of Valley Park, as well as along Hermosa Avenue, that could be used to lessen the burden on 25th Street. These areas, Davey said, could be used by parents to drop their kids off on their way to work, and to wait for them during designated times after school.
In public meetings, Davey’s ideas have been well received, even by people with more strident objections to the school. Whether these ideas could actually be implemented is unclear.
Officials involved with the North reconstruction have said in previous public meetings that parents were likely to rely on alternatives to the 25th Street entrance, including walking through Valley Park from the east.
“The key thing is drop-off and pick-up won’t be concentrated in one place. It’s showing a drop-off lane on 25th, but that is by no means the only way to get into campus,” Nathan Herrero, a project manager with SVA architects, the firm hired to carry out design work for Measure S, said at a board meeting last year.
But officially designating off-campus areas as drop-off and pick-up locations creates different issues than the informal arrangements like the ones Davey observed parents using at Valley.
The City Council and the School Board held a joint meeting in March to discuss issues raised by the city’s letter on the EIR. The two bodies agreed to work together to address traffic, but did not commit to any firm fixes.
Leeanne Singleton, an environmental analyst for Hermosa who has worked on the city’s concerns with the North project, said in an email that any decisions about designating drop-off zones on city property or “white-striping” curb segments would likely require City Council approval. She also said that the Coastal Commission, which will be reviewing the entire North project, would have to examine impacts on beach access created by changes to parking in the area.
Officials with the California Department of Education and the Office of Public School Construction did not respond to questions about whether state regulations would restrict the location of designated drop-off and pick-up zones.
Superintendent Pat Escalante said the district is open to all suggestions, and that alternative drop-off and pick-up locations could be part of the mitigation measures addressed in the revised EIR. But she said that the district also had to be mindful of the possibility that the alternatives could create new problems, and could not commit to supporting them.
“The approach is, ‘Go through the process.’ There are some ideas that people think are great, and then the same idea is looked upon as not being great by others. You have to look at the totality of the common interest, and you work from there,” Escalante said.
