Buses and parent cars create dangerous congestion
L'ANSE -- Every day nearly 750 students pour out of L'anse Area Schools. About half take the bus home and half get picked up by parents.
All this traffic happens in one concentrated area outside the school, creating severe congestion.
"It's a tight space because of all the driving right here. It just gets really cluttered at the end of the day," says Jeremy Stein, a parent.
"Coming here early, I've observed almost four or five potential accidents--a school bus running into cars or cars running into other cars--so it's just very hectic," says Shawn Seppanen, a parent.
It was a rude awakening when administrators, such as Principal Tom Sprague, saw the chaos students and parents were experiencing.
"We've had kids that have almost been hit that have run between a bus, so we're just trying to avoid that before a real disaster happens," says Sprague.
Administrators are taking action. The L'Anse Safe Routes to School team has devised a remedy.
Effective February 8, buses will pick up in the back of the school and parents will pick up by the Fourth Street school entrance. And the area where buses used to line up will now be used for more angled parent parking.
"I think it's going to work. It's going to separate the parent pick up point from the student pick up point," says John Van Dusen, a member of the Safe Routes team.
Parents will receive correspondence from the school in the coming weeks to avoid confusion.
"We're going to be putting some articles in the paper; we've got a map of how things will lay out that we're going to be putting out. We'll send notes home to parents," Sprague explains.
In the spring the school will look at creating crosswalks to make getting to and from school even safer for students.