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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEstabrook School Access Task Force Interim Report - Feb 2012 EstabrookSchoolAccessTaskForce(ETF)‘InterimReport Submitted to Board of Selectmen and School Committee February 9, 2012 Task Force Membership Michelle Ciccolo, Chair, Christian Boutwell, Jim Brown, Judy Crocker, Peter Johnson, Richard Larrabee, Ed Loturco, Ben Moroze, Harold Payson, Tom Peterson; Liaisons: Selectman Deb Mauger, School Committee Member MaryAnn Stewart; regular Town staff participants: Police Chief Mark Corr, Interim Fire Chief Keith Hoyle, Facilities Director Pat Goddard, Public Works Director Bill Hadley, Town Engineer John Livsey, Principal Sandra Trach ETF Charge Purpose - to advise the School Committee and Board of Selectmen on providing: 1.Safe access during construction of the new Estabrook School by the vehicular traffic of parents, faculty and construction vehicles, including pedestrians; 2.Access for public safety (police and fire department) purposes after the new school is constructed and in use; and 3.Access necessary for safe access by students who walk to the school, school buses and parents/guardians dropping off or picking up students. 1 Related Problems Identified for the Community to Address As data was gathered and discussions ensued, the following problems were identified Vehicle queuing & traffic congestion at the school entrance Inadequate public safety access _ F Poor pedestrian access • i .1 Parking spilling over onto private streets i causing hazardous conditions on nearby roads Decision Making Principals Always cognizant of the fact that the ETF charge only allows for it to make recommendations to decision making boards, nonetheless, certain principals had to guide our thinking and deliberations The ETF recognizes that any recommendation involving funding will need BOS/SC and Town Meeting appropriation (along with approvals potentially by other boards including Appropriations Committee, Capital Expenditures Committee & Permanent Building Committee) However, the following concepts guided the ETF in its process Maximize safety for students and others accessing site Allow for adequate public safety response to the site Make recommendations that allow for construction of the school to proceed on schedule Seek plans that improve safety & efficiency of processing student pick ups and drop offs Minimize cost to the town for implementing any solutions Minimize negative environmental outcomes Minimize impacts to residential neighbors Minimize neighborhood disruption during peak times Cars queuing on Grove St Attempt to find solutions that do not merely transfer the problem or burden from one location to another Activities The ETF met 10 times in public session between June 2011 and February 2012 to gather and review information related to safe access at Estabrook. The ETF held one site walk and convened a sub-committee to survey parents on transportation choices The ETF commissioned engineering studies of Beta Group, Inc and met numerous times with Beta and the DiNisco Design team to review ongoing design progress and consider various design scenarios relative to their impact on safe access The ETF allowed for regular public participation including comments and questions from the audience dunng all of its meetings Task Force members solicited input from neighbors dunng the process A public charette was held where all participants at the meeting were invited to mark up maps and make suggestions to design team members relative to safe access opportunities and improvements The minutes of the ETF meetings are on the web site along with the results of the transportation survey 2 Engineering The ETF contracted with Beta Group, Inc., to perform a traffic analysis and develop alternatives to improve site access. Existing site conditions and traffic data was gathered in June 2011 before school was dismissed for the year. Six early conceptual scenarios for permanent access were considered. A charette was held at which task force members and the public were invited to brainstorm ideas on site access improvements. Two initial concepts were dismissed fairly quickly due to their infeasibility for a variety of reasons related to conservation impacts, ledge, cost, impracticality. Beta Group then performed a more detailed analysis of the remaining four concepts. Construction Access The Task Force met with the DiNisco design team to review proposed school location on the site and construction access scenarios. The Task Force voted to recommend to the Board of Selectmen and School Committee that construction access be provided off of Grove Street in accordance with a specific plan known as Concept 5A shown below. This selection represented a modification to construction Concept 5 to minimize impact to the abutting property which has driveway access provide off of the school access road. Widening on the northwest side of the access drive has significant impact to the residential property which already has a steeply inclined drive. Any future design along the access road, needs to carefully take into consideration the impact to this drive to avoid creating an unmanageable access for this abutter. 3 The ETF recognizes that the 5A construction access scenario continues the present, undesirable practice of queuing vehicles off site on Grove Street during construction. However, for a variety of reasons, it was found that construction vehicles should enter the school grounds from Grove Street. Furthermore, it was determined to be less than ideal to have parents queuing on Robinson Road during construction. First the route to the construction site would be too tight and too circuitous for trucks to adequately access the construction site. Specifically, any through-traffic pattern using both Grove Street and Robinson Road, would create too much pavement and leave insufficient site space for construction staging and new building placement. Secondly, the route for parents dropping off was safer for the children if they were loading and unloading out of the passenger side of the car. The schematic diagrams showed that if coming from Robinson Road, children would have to cross vehicular pathways and exit vehicles from the wrong side of the car. Moreover, Robinson Road, in its present form, is unsuitable for heavy vehicles, and presently of insufficient width to allow for vehicle queuing and could not be upgraded prior to the start of construction. For all of these reasons and more, the ETF endorsed construction access option 5A. 4 Main Access to School Following consideration of how to get construction vehicles on-site and safely provide student drop off during construction, the ETF turned its attention to what should be the primary, main entrance to the new school. As outlined in the Beta Group Phase I report, more than 4 scenarios were considered and evaluated in-depth (several others were also reviewed but dismissed early on due to infeasibility). After careful review of the options, a unanimous vote was taken to recommend that the Grove Street entrance remain the primary entrance to the school with Robinson Road to be further evaluated to fill public safety and other minor access needs. The exact language of that vote is as follows: A motion was made and seconded to designate the current main entrance as the future main entrance with Robinson Road access as a candidate to be explored for secondary access. A modification was made on this motion to add that the Task Force would recommend to the designer that Grove Street remain the primary access with Robinson Road being the secondary access . Reasons why Robinson Road was not selected as the primary access are numerous but the following constitute the majority of considerations as to why the ETF felt Grove Street was a main superioraccess point: Sight lines are worse at Robinson & Grove Street than they are at Grove Street at the Access road and this section of Grove Street can be modified more easily to improve sight lines and safety Robinson Road has a 90 degree turn which would be difficult for school buses and other large vehicles to navigate Grove Street is more direct while Robinson Rd. is circuitous and Grove Street currently can accommodate more vehicular volume Given that students are to remain in the present school during construction, the only location for the new school is in the rear of the existing site. Accessing the school from Grove Street will allow for a longer internal vehicular queue which helps to resolve a major safety concern 5 With the school sited so close to the back of the lot, there would not likely be room along that back side of the building to allow for internal circulation for the drop-off area. Longer length drop off areas tend to work more effectively so queuing would be less efficient and probably take longer than it does today if done from the Robinson side Note:! Image represents early design site plan concept only! Queuing on Robinson Road is undesirable because the road dead-ends at the school and such queuing would make it difficult for public safety officials to get to the school in the event of an accident or other emergency at the entrance of the school unless Robinson Road is widened more significantly (even greater than 24’). Queuing on Robinson would make it very difficult for residents to access their homes at the end of the Street. Queuing on Grove Street today causes many of the same problems but at these residents can approach the school entrance from two directions and can still (albeit not ideally) get to their homes if they drive in opposite of the queue. Moreover, the new school presents an opportunity to eliminate the queuing on Grove Street which is highly unsafe and undesirable Queuing on Robinson Road would likely lead to the requirement to widen the road to at least 24’ but probably much wider given public safety response needs Robinson Road upgrades are proceeding on a separate design time line and funding source and any significant widening will likely require greater permitting including an 1 NOI, and ENF. Consequently, such improvements might not be ready and in place by the time the new school opens. 1 Mass. Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) review under 301CMR, Section 11.03: http://www.env.state.ma.us/mepa/regs/11-03.aspx 6 As some houses are in close proximity to the road and there are numerous trees, significant widening of Robinson Road (beyond 18’) would be cost prohibitive, likely in the range of $3 million – at least double the cost of the proposed improvements to widen it to 18’. Public Safety The Town’s public safety officials provided input and recommendations regarding emergency vehicular access. A ladder test was performed to evaluate the suitability of the secondary school access off of Robinson Road. A memorandum was provide by public safety to the ETF detailing minimum standards. The ETF voted to adopt the recommendations outlined in the October 31, 2011 public safety memorandum. Public safety officials further revised and refined their th recommendations in a follow up memorandum dated January 17, 2012. In that memorandum, a traffic light is recommended at the school entrance on Grove Street. The ETF has not yet made a recommendation relative to whether or not it supports a traffic light. It was discussed at the last ETF meeting that further information regarding the amount of on-site queuing would be needed before traffic engineers could make a recommendation on the utility and desirability of a traffic light. This issue remains open for further discussion by the ETF. The ETF notes here that a traffic light, in order to operate at desired efficiency, would likely require turning lanes on Grove Street and on the access road. Thus, it is important to consider such an option very carefully as any installation of a light will have impacts to abutters both on Grove Street and on the access road. While traffic operational improvements may offset any negative impacts, the issue must be studied carefully. Robinson The ETF has endorsed the recommendation of public safety that the entire length of Road be upgradedto a minimum of 18 feet to provide adequate fire vehicle access to the 7 school. In addition to other components in the public safety recommendations of October 2011, the ETF has endorsed the following items included in that memorandum: Turn around area at the end of Robinson Road on the school site with limited parking for student drop off. Widen corner of Robinson Road before Turning Mill Road Work with Safe Routes to Schools Committee to evaluate installing a sidewalk from Turning Mill Road to the end of Robinson Road, ETF also supports continuing this side walk all the way to Grove Street Improve the Robinson Road and Grove Street intersection Improve site lines on Grove Street by the school entrance Eliminate queuing on Grove Street Further ETF Recommendations The ETF voted to recommend that free busing ETF took two additional but significant votes. or reduced bus fees be provided during the construction phase of the project . This is in recognition of the fact that the present situation of queuing is unsafe, generates significant congestion, and is an ongoing burden to area residents. It is likely that despite everyone’s best efforts, increased traffic to the site and other construction impacts may worsen this situation. Therefore getting kids onto buses so they can be safely delivered to school without delay is of utmost importance. The Town may also want to revisit its policy on bus fees in general and we applaud the work of the newly created committee to evaluate school transportation. The work of this committee should be supported and advanced with enthusiasm. Regarding Permanent School Access The ETF recommends that through the combination of behavioral, procedural and engineering that no queuing should overflow onto any public way after the new school is measures, built . This last recommendation requires clarification and explanation. Despite the fact that queuing occurs at many of our schools in Lexington, queuing on public roads at worse presents a grave safety concern and at best creates a public nuisance with congestion, and negative air quality impacts. The ETF believes that building a new Estabrook School provides an opportunity to correct an untenable queuing situation. Our leaders should look to correct the problem and not allow it to continue and our design team and our public administrators should collectively be able to come up with creative solutions. The ETF strongly favors modifying behavioral and procedural methods for arrival and dismissal for the permanent facility, in lieu of aggressive and costly off-site improvements. Given that the off-site improvement funding has been de-coupled from the Debt Exclusion, such measures can be implemented later if the behavioral and procedural changes fail to produce the desired result. Many of the scenarios the Task Force has reviewed thus far seem to be a somewhat excessive solution to a queuing problem that essentially only occurs for approximately 20-minutes per day (afternoon pick up), 5 times per week (and not in the summer). Over-engineering a solution to a short duration problem may be unnecessarily costly, disruptive, destructive, and environmentally 8 unsound. Many Task Force members have expressed the sentiment that we need leadership to come up with creative space planning and usage scenarios to avoid having tax payers over spend on physical improvements. That tax payer money can be better spent elsewhere educating kids or fixing roads… It is not the job of the Task Force to micro manage areas under the purview of the School Committee and BOS but here are some of the ideas that have come out through this process: Phased dismissal schedule Free or reduced fee busing Charging parents a fee for dropping off in single-family vehicles (as opposed to car pooling) Parking configurations on-site to which parents are directed for mandatory parking (no live pick up) when the queue starts to approach Grove Street Satellite parking lots served by trails leading into the site (similar to what Bridge School has with the Old Reservoir parking lot), perhaps at Mountain Road Phased construction improvements to off-site roads such as adding a stacking/storage lane on Grove Street, and/or adding a stacking/storage lane on Robinson Road, or Eldred Given cost and impact to Street, and/or widening the entrance drive to the school. neighborhood character, these latter options should only be considered if above options are tried and fail to achieve the desired result. School bus fees should be reduced or eliminated during the construction phase and a fee instituted for parents who drop off. Additional and clarifying recommendations of the ETF: A sidewalk should be added to Robinson Road connecting all the way to Grove Street. Design of this element needs to be carefully coordinated with the neighborhood. As one can see from the map below, there are a lot of residential houses to the East of Robinson Road and children coming from those houses should be able to walk to school. If Robinson Road remains a small, narrow, residential road, a sidewalk is essential to safe access for students coming from those neighborhoods. A turn-around area needs to be provided at the end of Robinson Road for Fire Truck access and to prevent other vehicles from having to drive over or back up into abutting properties. The final site design should have a longer loading and unloading area for students to maximize the efficiency and speed of loading and unloading students arriving by car. 9 A broader survey (with public input) of surrounding streets and walking access should be conducted with the Public Works Department, School Department, Sidewalk Committee, Bike Committee, Safe Routes To School Committee, Greenways Corridor Committee, PTA, and neighborhood to identify and catalog a long-term plan for minor phased improvements to walking and biking access to the school which can be implemented as roads are rebuilt or upgraded or as other funding for safety and access improvements becomes available. More information Further information on the ETF: http://ci.lexington.ma.us/committee/estabrookaccess.cfm 10