Description
As a parent of a student who attends the East Bay German International School, I wonder how the new street design is improving the safety of our kids and parents who need to bring their kids to the school entrance. As it can be seen drivers as well as passengers who are sitting behind the driver in case of carpooling would need to open their doors into the narrow street which requires cars that would be driving by to stop to avoid collisions. Furthermore, the limited space for drop-off or parking next to the stopping traffic due to passengers opening their doors into the street is causing a significant traffic backlog that blocks Adeline Street in both directions.
12 Comments
Jeff McKnight (Registered User)
I am also a parent of two children at East Bay German International School, and agree with all of Robert's initial comments.
In addition, I find the new lane striping to be confusing and dangerous. I really worry that the new configuration is going to cause accidents and injuries to the children during the daily drop-offs and pick-ups.
Robert (Registered User)
Ingo (Registered User)
I’d like to add to this report by expressing my disapproval with the updated traffic management on 41st St.? The condensing of traffic into one lane on one side of the street is causing a significantly increased risk to pedestrians (comprised of school children) crossing the street. Furthermore, this appears to be exacerbating congestion on adjacent street.
I’d like for city planning to explore other options that take greater consideration of local pedestrian foot traffic.
victor (Registered User)
B Bird (Registered User)
SS (Registered User)
40th Street has bike lanes, 43rd street has bike signiage. 41st does not need exclusive bike lanes for the duration of that block. A place where 2 to18 year olds are frequently crossing the street should not be a place for cyclists to get their own lanes.
Malea23 (Registered User)
I’m also a parent at EBGIS and have had to circle the block 3-4x as the available parking has decreased by many fold. This is a severe traffic problem. This creates bad drivers. Which I feel is less safe for kids. Today one parent was even parking on the sidewalk.
We ride bikes approximately once a week and have never felt that we needed our own bike lane.
Yasemin (Registered User)
StephanE (Registered User)
Besides being a parent at EBGIS, we are a family of avid and passionate bicyclists - we ride our bikes to school on most days and I'm the first one to applaud new bike lanes. I want more bike lanes and this is not a "NIMBY" issue for me. Still, the changes seem quite counter-productive:
In its current form, the bike traffic will be between kids going in and out of parents' cars, which are bike/kids accidents, and probably lawsuits, waiting to happen.
In addition, the number of "real" parking spaces seems much reduced, which among other things is unhelpful for the teachers at the school.
It would seem like there is a solution that would both (1) establish a robust new bike lane, while also (2) preserving parking spaces and avoiding kids having to cross bike lanes:
* establish new bike lane(s) on the Southern side of 41st Street
* establish 45 degree diagonal parking on the Northern (school-facing) side of the street - both for school pickup/dropoff, but also for teachers
* keep a normal one-way car lane in between
Why not do it this way? Is there any downside to that approach?
Kamara Vrandecic (Registered User)
City Manager's Office (Verified Official)
Jonathan M (Registered User)
I am a parent at EBGIS who regularly drops off and picks up on 41st Street, and the new lane markings are markedly worse than what was there before. The new lane markers are incredibly inefficient because they bottleneck traffic during peak times by creating long lines of cars blocked from driving down the street by cars trying to parallel park. Imagine 100+ cars all trying to drop off in a 20-minute period with lots of little kids to unbuckle and preschoolers age 2-5 to walk into school. Traffic jam!
The lane markings have also dramatically reduced the number of spaces available on the street. Why didn't the city at least create angled parking to fit more cars?
By forcing the parking spots into the middle of the street, it also feels more dangerous because we have little kids exiting the car very close to moving traffic now since the driving lane is so narrow. I have to unbuckle my daughter from the car seat next to traffic with the door open and I feel much more vulnerable to getting hit. This doesn't feel safe to be so close to the cars driving inches away.
Also, why is there so much room for a bike lane just on this one section of 41st street? I'm all for bike transport, but it seems like the bike lane was designed to just take up room, and there are no lanes linking it anywhere before or after this 1 block. It just doesn't make sense that such a big bike lane is needed.
Please re-think this lane marking since even if there were good intentions to prevent cars driving the wrong way down the street, you have made it much worse in terms of overall safety and efficiency.