Allyx Schiavone said she’s “terrified” to allow her little kids to walk to school — but also fearful of dangers posed by drivers when she drops them off.
Schiavone, who has children at Foote School and Calvin Hill Day Care, is hardly alone. Few kids walk there or to Celentano School on the same block. That has caused a traffic and parking nightmare on tiny Loomis Place between Highland and Canner streets.
Schiavone and more than a dozen other parents, school officials, and neighbors met with the city’s transportation czar at Foote Tuesday night to wrestle with how to unclog the drop-off and pick-up bottleneck, and make the streets safer.
It was the latest in a series of discussions about traffic safety, or lack thereof, in the neighborhood. (Click here and here for previous stories.)
Charlotte Murphy (pictured), Foote’s communications director, noted the drop-off in walkers over the past ten years.
Parents who used to walk their kids to school and return home — mostly mothers — now drive their kids to school, walk them into class, and then head straight to work, Murphy said.
She added, “Cell phones have changed the landscape of driving,” often reducing drivers’ concentration and attention to the road and any pedestrians who may be crossing.
And nobody lets their children walk alone to school anymore, added Allyx Schiavone, mother of a 7 year-old child at Foote and a 5 year-old at Calvin Hill Day Care Center around the corner on Highland Street.
“My son won’t walk to school until he’s at least 12,” she said. “I’m terrified.” When asked to clarify if she was afraid of traffic, of potential kidnappers, or something else, she replied, “I’m terrified of everything.”
She said times have changed since she was a student at Foote in the 1980s, or when her brother was there in the 1990s.
Mike Piscitelli, New Haven’s director of transportation, traffic and parking, was on hand to discuss the traffic part of the equation. He said half of New Haveners get around by walking, cycling or taking transit — an unusually high percentage.
Loomis Place resident David Cameron (pictured) cracked, “And the other half are drivers running stop signs and red lights.”
Piscitelli reiterated several times that most drivers in New Haven — and most parents at Foote — are law-abiding. It’s the ones who aren’t who cause the problems.
He said the solution there — just like around the city — is three-fold: education, engineering and enforcement. Education comes through the city’s Street Smarts program, reminding all road users to obey traffic laws. Engineering means changing the physical attributes of roads to encourage safety, like the in-street pedestrian crossing signs that have been popping up at unsignaled crosswalks around town, and that he would like to put on Highland Street at Loomis Place, to slow cars down. Enforcement means police citing motorists who run stop signs or red lights, or speed above the 25 miles per hour limit. (And cyclists and pedestrians must follow the rules of the road.)
Piscitelli mentioned a broad ticketing campaign for parking violations. He said efforts are underway to get a walk light at Highland and Prospect streets and a new traffic light at Whitney Avenue and Huntington Street, by the new Hooker School. He added that his staff has occasionally ticketed Foote parents who park on the wrong side of the street.
“Thank you,” Murphy said. “We try to educate them all the time, so the more support we get, the better it is.” She said some parents who were ticketed complained to the school’s business office and wanted the school to pay the tickets.
“It was a good teachable moment,” she remarked.
Schiavone said she’d like to see Loomis Place made into a one-way street, which she felt would increase safety. Piscitelli said he wouldn’t rule that out. He said his goal is to work first with parents and neighbors of the two private schools in the area, Foote and Calvin Hill. When the public schools are out for the summer, he plans to work with administrators to come up with a safety plan for Celentano and Hooker schools, so that by the time schools reopen in the fall, there is a fully fleshed out safety plan in place for the whole area.
Another problem parents cited: that the two safety guards Foote employs are not visible or official-looking enough, and are not really trained to direct traffic. Murphy said some parents ignore their directives. Piscitelli said either they need more training, or they can act only as crossing guards for the students. He offered what he called a Class II safety vest (held up by Schiavone in the photo at top of story) as appropriate garb. “They’re expensive,” he said, “but they’re worth it.”
In conclusion, he said, “If we upgrade the safety guards, reinforce one drop-off with no double parking, and get out on the back end with some enforcement, that’ll tide us over until we know what we want to do long-term.”
Murphy added, “If we work with parents, and get some positive peer pressure from parent to parent, that would help hugely.”
Schiavone asked Piscitelli if parents and administrators put together a wish list of changes and bring them to him, would he respond with what he thinks would be doable and appropriate? He agreed, and added, “Then we need to message it.”
Attendees said they want him to come back for that part, to underline how serious the issue is.
I'll do everything I can to assist anyone in the neighborhood who would like to write a Federal Safe Routes to School grant.
Email me at [email protected] if you'd like to take me up on my offer. (or just post your comment here and we can have a public discussion).