Back to School Traffic

With the start of the new school year comes lots more morning and afternoon traffic. In my neighborhood I see the long lines of cars waiting to drop off kids in the mornings. It is rather funny in some ways how parents, either knowingly or not, seem to abandon all sense of traffic laws around schools. They seem to be narrowly focused on the objective of getting their child as close to the entrance to the school as possible. This is often accomplished by double (or triple) parking in front of the school, pulling in to neighbors driveways, and making illegal turns of all sorts. It just seems like total chaos the first fews days or weeks of school. My daily commute takes me by a high school in the mornings. I am amazed at how many parents park in the bike lane along the street to use it as a drop-off zone. They also ignore traffic safety at the intersections by making left turns onto the already too crowded side road of the school, often blocking the intersection. This makes for interesting navigation around the school on a bike. Unfortunately there is no real alternate route, as this is the only road the crosses over a couple of canyons. There does not seem to be a good place for dropping off kids around this school, but after all this is a high school. It is not like the parents must make sure the kids are dropped off right outside the entrance. I think they can be trusted to walk a block or two if they can be dropped off on a nearby street.
Maybe there is not a good solution. The school was built when there was not nearly as many people and houses in the neighborhood. I am sure they did not anticipate the amount of vehicle traffic there would be when it was built. It's the same for many of the elementary and middle schools around, too. Of course, most kids back then also walked to school. Hmmm...now there's a crazy thought.