LETTER by Kathryn Reich, LWSD Director of Communications
In cutting bus stops by one third, the district acknowledged that one of the byproducts would be the inconvenience of longer rides for some students. Overall, the district will indeed save hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is saving teacher jobs. The change in route that Ms. Wilkins describes does lengthen the bus ride and is more inconvenient. But the situation she describes is not the entire story.
All Redmond Junior High routes were changed to reduce the number of routes by one. So the primary savings for these routes is from eliminating one bus route entirely. Redoing a set of routes means that some students, like Ms. Wilkins’, who were the last picked up in last year’s route become the second picked up in this year’s.
One of the main issues is that by law, for safety reasons, the school bus must pick up students on Avondale on the bus door side. If students on Avondale were picked up first as suggested, no matter which route the bus took from the bus barn, it would have to turn around and double back on Avondale at some point. The total length of the bus route would be longer, costing more money. Any other reconfiguration of the bus routes that moves the Avondale stop to another route also results in longer routes, costing more money.
The requirement to pick up and drop off students on the door side on Avondale works to Ms. Wilkins’ student’s advantage in the afternoon. The routing used to make sure that happens results in the students at her stop being dropped off first in the afternoon, an average ride time of five to eight minutes.
Ms. Wilkin’s assertions about the time the bus arrives at the stop and at school are not borne out by the Zonar GPS system on the bus. According to that system’s report, which Ms. Wilkins or anyone else is welcome to see, the bus pick-up time at her stop in the morning is between 7:11 and 7:13 and arrival at the school is between 7:30 and 7:31. The average ride time is 18 minutes from her stop.
Finally, making any changes now will not affect the district’s funding from the state for transportation. The district’s ride count week has already occurred. The district’s numbers do show a drop of about 11 students from 23 to 12 at the stop Ms. Wilkins is writing about. There was no significant drop at any other stop on this route.
This change in bus routes is indeed inconvenient but the district will save money, nonetheless.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Reith
Communications Director, Lake Washington School District
10/9/09
It is not true that the bus must travel southbound in order to pick up students along the west side of Avondale. There are two northbound routes that the school bus could follow to pick up the students who live between NE 85th Place and NE 90th Street along Avondale Road.
ReplyDeleteOption 1.) The bus could drive north on Avondale and turn left across the southbound traffic onto NE 85th Place and pick up the students on the side street off of Avondale. It could then continue in a loop and follow NE 88th Place back down the hill to Avondale, make a left across traffic and continue north to NE 104th Street. Both NE 85th Place and NE 88th Place are marked as dead-ends, but they are continuous. In the past, the southbound buses that picked up Einstein Elementary students along Avondale would use this loop to turn the bus around before heading north to Einstein.
Option 2.) Students who currently wait at the NE 85th Place bus stop would walk north to 180th Avenue NE and cross at the traffic light and wait on the east side of Avondale near the fruit stand where the northbound bus could pick them up and then continue to NE 104th Street.
In WAC 392-145-011 section (5), it states:
On highways divided into separate roadways as provided in RCW 46.61.150 and highways with three or more marked traffic lanes, school districts shall design bus routes that serve each side of the highway so that students do not have to cross the highway, UNLESS THERE IS A TRAFFIC CONTROL SIGNAL as defined in RCW 46.04.600 or an adult crossing guard within three hundred feet of the bus stop to assist students while crossing such multiple-lane highways.
In both of these scenarios the bus would be traveling north on Avondale and would avoid the slow southbound traffic. Although traffic was moving quickly and predictably on Avondale on the days that the ride counts were taken, when the weather gets bad and it is dark in the morning or when an accident occurs, the traffic on Avondale will slow to a crawl and the RJH students will be late for school. (When my children were students at Einstein Elementary, I remember frequently hearing the secretary announcing over the PA that the bus that picked students up along Avondale was late and that teachers should wait to take attendance.) If the bus is routinely late, the RJH students who ride this bus will frequently miss part of their 1st period class.
Driving north on Avondale and picking up NE 85th Place students first and the students on east Education Hill second would save fuel and increase the number of students riding the bus each morning. Although the annual ride counts have already been taken, WAC 392-141-165 allows school districts to submit updated counts if ridership increases ten percent or more from the initial October counts.
My children are being driven to school each morning because the current bus is impractical. They and many other students from the neighborhood would ride the bus if the route were reconfigured so that the amount of time and distance on the bus was reduced and the risk of a late arrival was minimized. The morning traffic around RJH is chaotic and unbearable and adding my car and my neighbors’ cars to the traffic is not helping.
Please have the Transportation Department take another look at this route and see if it can be updated to better serve both the Avondale students and the Education Hill students.
Thank you,
Susan Wilkins