INDIAN RIVER COUNTY – The traffic nightmare that is 16th Street at Rosewood Magnet Elementary School in Vero Beach will be a thing of the past come the next school year.
The Indian River County School Board Tuesday discussed and, without a vote, provided direction to School District staff to move forward with a plan that would queue parent traffic on the school’s site rather than along westbound 16th Street.
“We’ve put a few Band-Aids on it,” said Scott Sanders, the District’s facilities director. “We made it better, but we didn’t make it ideal.”
The District placed No Left Turn signs at the entry for eastbound 16th Street traffic. Before the signs were placed, parents dropping off or picking up their children could queue in both directions along 16th Street, creating a traffic snarl that made through-traffic impossible and emergency vehicle access difficult.
Sanders has proposed closing off access to the parent loop from 16th Street. Instead, parents wanting to use the loop would have access from 18th Street. A two-lane drive would connect 18th Street with the parent loop, winding along the east border of the school’s campus.
Parents wanting to use the parking lot to pick up their students would be able to use the 16th Street entry, but would be blocked from the loop with a pair of gates.
“It’s the most viable option,” Sanders told the School Board during a discussion session prior to the regular Board meeting. “It’s the least intrusive, the least expensive.” He added that it is also the most efficient.
Sanders told the Board that a traffic study shows that all the queuing traffic would be held on-site and would not spill out onto 18th Street, affecting the neighbors. He also noted that there are multiple ways for drivers to get to the 18th Street entrance that, while traffic would increase on the street, it would be fractured.
“It kind of splits the traffic up,” Sanders said.
With the School Board’s support, Sanders expects to take a few weeks to ready the project for bid and send it out for responses. Construction could begin by July and be complete in time for the start of the 2014-15 school year.
Though there is no firm budget established for the project as of yet, Sanders gave the Board a rough estimate of $180,000, which includes the two gates needed to separate the parking lot from the parent loop, speed bumps for the two-lane drive, and a 13-spot parking lot addition.
Assistant Superintendent Carter Morrison told the Board that there were funds left over from various now-completed projects and those dollars would be used to fund the Rosewood project.
The road connecting 18th Street to the parent loop will impact a couple trees on the school’s property and the playground.
Sanders said there is already a playground project planned, which will relocate it out of the path of the drive. There will be adequate separation of the playground and the road, he added.
During the afternoon Discussion Session, School Board member Claudia Jimenez asked if the parent loop project would affect summer camp.
Schools Superintendent Dr. Fran Adams said she does not anticipate the work to affect the students.
As for the impacted trees, Sanders said they would be replaced and more trees would also be planted.
The School Board was expected to discuss the proposed Rosewood project during the regular meeting Tuesday night. But, because the Board discussed it earlier in the day, there were few additional comments made.
School Board member Karen Disney-Brombach asked if an incident had provoked the formation of the project.
Dr. Adams said there had not been any known incident. Sanders said during the earlier discussion that Rosewood and the District have been aware of the traffic issues for years but hadn’t created a plan to address it.
“I’m glad it’s preventative rather than reactive,” Disney-Brombach said Tuesday night.