TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY BOARD AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Approve a recommendation to establish a “School Parking Restrictions” traffic schedule (Item 1 of 2)
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DEPARTMENT: Transportation, Engineering and Development
SUBMITTED BY: Michael Prousa, TED Project Manager
BACKGROUND:
The TED Business Group develops traffic control and school walk route plans for elementary and junior high schools. These plans are posted on the City of Naperville website while also distributed to school and district officials.
Traffic control plans highlight parking regulations, bus loading zones and special parent pick-up and drop-off zones. Each plan strictly eliminates parent parking on the approaches to each crosswalk and school driveway entrances and exits to ensure that the crossing children may be clearly seen.
The school walk route maps are used to help identify routes for students to use on their way to and from school.
There are 35 elementary and junior high schools within the city limits. While each school has a unique traffic control and school walk route plan, the goal is to have terminology and restrictions standardized throughout the City.
DISCUSSION:
Over the past few years, TED staff has been updating the traffic control and school walk route plans on a request basis. This typically involved reviewing and observing current plans and making modifications if warranted. While this process was effective in improving outdated plans, some schools have had plans that have not been reviewed for over 20 years.
These outdated plans did not match what was going on in the field and they did not match City’s municipal code parking regulations and zones.
In 2023, TED staff reached out to the district safety directors at District 203 and 204 in hopes of reviewing each school’s traffic control and school walk route plans with the goal of making the arrival and dismissal procedures safer.
Over the last few months, TED staff has observed each school’s arrival and dismissal procedures and are in the process of making modifications to those procedures. Some of these modifications will have no impact on arrival and dismissal operations while others will have a larger impact.
The signage and striping modifications that are a byproduct of this project will be completed on a priority basis. The modifications that have a direct impact on school operations will be completed in the summer of 2024 before the 2024-2025 school year begins.
The current municipal code has parking restrictions related to schools in 5 different traffic schedules which can make it difficult to find specific parking restrictions for a school. Staff would like to remove the school-related parking restrictions from these 5 different traffic schedules into a new traffic schedule that will be specific to school-related parking restrictions. Attached is the ordinance creating the new traffic schedule.