Published: September 05, 2009 06:49 am      

Traffic woes — 09/08/09

Many adults could learn from example of Verity students

Many adults who address the Ashland Board of City Commissioners and other public bodies could learn a lot from a group of seventh-graders at George M. Verity Middle School. Instead of simply expressing their views with little or nothing to support them, the students from Verity’s seventh-grade Discovery Team addressed the city’s governing body armed with facts to support their opinions.

Their opinion: The traffic signal at 29th and Kansas streets — the main entrance to the middle school — is dangerous because too many drivers are ignoring the law.

To support their view, students observed traffic at the intersection during the busiest times of the day just before school in the morning and just after school in the afternoon. What they observed were inattentive drivers talking on their cell phones; drivers turning right on red despite clearly visible signs saying “No turn on red;” and some drivers simply failing to stop for the red light.

Casey Clark, whose father is an officer for the Ashland Police Department, said he and his classmates counted more than 100 motorists violating traffic laws. “A lot of people who were running it (the signal) were on their cell phones, looking at their cell phones, texting, not paying a lick of attention to what they were doing,” he said.

“It’s a really dangerous place,” Noah Edison, 12, said earlier in the afternoon at Verity. “It really kind of scares me. Not only do I fear for other students but I fear for myself. ... When we cross that road you really have to be aware or you can get hit.”

In addition to providing a few facts to support their opinions, the students offered their own solution to the problem: change the traffic light at the intersection to a permanent stop light to get motorists to obey it.

While we commend the students for their civic involvement and their research to support their opinions, we disagree with their solution. We think there are other, less drastic ways to solve the traffic problem around the school. If the APD would assign an officer to monitor the intersection during peak times and that officer would issue citations — or at least warnings — to those who violate the law, we think the traffic problems would largely disappear within a matter of days.

Traffic signals serve at least two useful purposes. One is to increase safety. The other is to facilitate the smooth flow of traffic. Having the traffic signal operate 24 hours a day may make the intersection safer, but it would needlessly slow the flow of traffic during the hours when students and buses are not clogging Kansas Street.

In fact, except during the hours immediately before and after school, there is not need for a traffic signal at the intersection. That’s because the vast majority of the traffic is on 29th Street, not Kansas and the other nearby side streets. Motorists can easily and safely pull onto 29th Street from a side street without the assistance of a traffic signal.

The light at 29th and Kansas serves the identical purpose of another traffic signal on Beech and Floyd streets near the entrance to Paul G. Blazer High School. That signal also only is fully operational before and after school and flashes the remainder of the time.

We know from experience that if you are not paying close enough attention, it is easy to run a traffic signal that is flashing most of the time. But if you are not paying enough attention to stop for a red light in a school zone at 10 minutes to 8 in the morning, you probably are not going to stop for it at 1 p.m. or 1 a.m.

Increased enforcement during peak periods is the best response to the safety hazard the students so ably pointed out with their research.