Rush hour spreads to school zones

By Andrew Serba

Elena Rodriguez spends a good part of her day picking up and dropping off children from three neighbourhood schools. She has run a home daycare for 11 years. While parents who see their own children to school increasingly rely on cars, Rodriguez has always accomplished this daily routine on foot. She said she’s concerned about the number of cars around schools in the morning and afternoon.

“I’ve been doing it for enough years that I’ve got a good regimen and (the kids) listen to me really well,” she said. “I wait until I know that cars are stopped, but I’ve still nearly been hit myself . . . funny enough, it was a mother flying through a red light . . . with a child strapped safely in.”

More often than not, children are chauffeured to school by their parents, who want to see them safely through the school’s doors. In doing so, they have brought the problems associated with the morning commute in the city – congestion, poor air quality, and an environment that invites accidents – directly to the places where they are least wanted: school zones.

Traffic Const. Mig Roberts, of the Toronto Police Service, stressed that safety is the paramount concern around schools.

“If there’s less traffic in a school zone, there is less chance of an accident,” he said. “(Walking) is healthier for the kids; it’s good for the environment. With gas prices the way they are, why not walk?”

That’s a question on the minds of many school board and traffic officials in Toronto. Marko Oinonen, a manager of traffic operations with the city, said that the trend towards driving kids to school has grown since the ‘90s. The response has been to bend the infrastructure around school zones to accommodate parents’ behaviour.

Oinonen said boards change school zones to “mitigate the danger” posed by traffic. Schools add parking lanes so parents can drop their children off right in front. The lane opposite the school is designated a “no stopping zone,” preventing children from being dropped off where they might cross two or more lanes of traffic to reach the front doors.

These sorts of measures are a far cry from school-zone planning in the 1950s and ‘60s, when the proverbial uphill walk to school and home again was more prevalent. Back then, all lanes in front of schools were no stopping zones, said Oinonen.

Sheila Cary-Meagher, the Toronto District School Board Trustee for Beaches-East York, responded to her constituents’ concerns about traffic and safety in front of Glen Ames Sr. Public School by having a school-side parking lane installed. While the measure has made the area safer, Cary-Meagher lamented the need to change school zones when the majority of families live within walking distance.

Oinonen explained that retrofitting older school zones for drop-off lanes is not always possible or desirable. There could be no space for an extra lane, for example, or green space or a playground may have to be removed to make room for one.

Although Glen Ames boasts ample green space and large playground areas, Cary-Meagher was still reluctant to alter the zone to accommodate behaviour she sees as harmful and unwarranted.
“If I could have figured out a different way to do it I would have done it,” she said. “Even if (the parents) live two blocks away they drive their kids to school, leave their cars, and . . . walk their kids right up to the door.”

This school-zone rush hour is a product of a number of concerns. Safety is one. Many parents don’t want their children to walk to school alone. The trend towards families with two breadwinners and very little extra time is another.

Transportation and Safety officer Sheila Dove, who works with both the TDSB and the Toronto Catholic District School Board, said that the traffic is a result of a complex set of factors.

“I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s cool to drive when you live two blocks away from the school, but that’s what’s happening and parents plan it in their day,” she said. “We need to spend more time educating the public. These types of things have to be promoted and maybe we need to promote it more.”

Josh Matlow, a TDSB trustee and member of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, thinks that once people make walking with their children to school a habit, many of the concerns about safety will disappear.

“The more we all get out of our homes and walk, we have opportunities to meet each other and learn about one another’s lives,” he said. “(This) builds a sense of community.”

Safety officer Dove also said the school-zone rush hour can’t be solved by an investment in infrastructure, or better public transit. More fundamental changes need to take place.

“We spend more time reacting to traffic problems than creating the communities we want to see,” she said. “The neighbourhoods and the schools have divorced each other somehow.”

Matlow noted that initiatives such as “Walking Wednesdays” and “walking school buses” can be the start of a new habit that “supports safety, the environment and community building.” He added that the effort at some schools to make a point of encouraging children to walk on Wednesdays has had a small, but very positive effect.

“People who normally have their morning coffee indoors come outside to wave to all the kids,” he said. “It’s great. It’s like a parade.”

Making walking a safe and popular way to get to school is exactly the change many people want to see. The trick is to extend it beyond a single day of the week, or during times when it is fashionable to be green, according to Dove.

“We need to make it cool to walk to school,” she said. “We’ve somehow managed to get people to buckle up in cars . . . I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility to get people to act in an environmentally friendly and safe manner.”