TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY BOARD AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
title
Approve a recommendation to add restrictions to the “School Parking Restrictions” traffic schedule (Item 2 of 2)
body
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.
The existing traffic control plan and school walk route for Beebe Elementary School is attached for your reference.
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 While this process was effective in improving outdated plans, some schools have had plans that have not been reviewed for over 20 years.
These outdated plans did not match what was going on in the field and they did not match City’s municipal code parking regulations and zones.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. The district safety directors met with TED staff at each school for observations. Letters of support from the district are attached.
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.
TED staff has sent letters to impacted residents of modifications that will alter operations or a modification that was not present before. Staff made 23 different parking modifications with 22 receiving positive support of the restriction. 1 restriction received below the minimum of 60% support needed for TAB consideration and has been removed from the recommendations.
The attached ordinance shows removal of the school related traffic ordinances from the various traffic schedules and then the new ordinances added to the new traffic schedule for school related restrictions. During this process, staff found duplicate and redundant ordinances. 381 restrictions were removed from the traffic schedules and 166 restrictions were added back to the School Parking Restrictions traffic schedule.
The new restrictions will be discussed during a presentation at the April 4, 2024 which will also touch on the background and procedures of the project.