There’s been a lot of new discussion in the past few days about the new traffic light was installed on Parker St. at Route 9. So I figured I close that thread and start a new thread here.
How do you feel about the new traffic light on Parker Street?
by Greg Reibman | Oct 18, 2013 | Newton | 13 comments
In the other thread, Alicia wrote “I for one would like to see a comprehensive study of the school bus transportation provided in the city and better understand why we don’t have more kids using the bus…More convenient stops and shorter routes. As long as parents can drive their kids to school in a fraction of the time it takes them to go by bus, they will drive.”
How could you leave out the issue of bus fees? All the things you mentioned won’t matter a bit if it costs more for the kids to take the bus than be driven.
As a parent of two, who ride the bus, I believe that instituting the bus fee was a bad idea. Every school has congestion around it. . . . and to pay over $600 a year for my kids to ride the bus is really STEEP! I believe in being green – reduce, reuse and recycle. . . . we have a Prius. It would be EASY for me to drop my kids off at school and save the money but not green. It really gets me that the PARKING FEE at HIGH SCHOOL is CHEAPER than taking the bus! CHEAPER! We are REWARDING students for driving themselves!!!!!! My eldest is now in middle school, and he takes the later bus when doing after school activities. I think it is great. The one time I had to pick him up from school was a mad house. . . . we have all the south side kids grades 6-12 in ONE small area.
Elimate the bus fees!
Increase the parking fees!
Encourage using the bus!
Newton Mon-
Well said.
Outstanding Newton Mom.
I slightly disagree with Newton Mom. If the parking fees increase too much, it just pushes the parking out onto city streets. The perfect point would be expensive enough to raise maximum funds but cheap enough that almost all spots are filled.
And I’d keep the bus fees at a much lower lever, something like $200. Just enough to pay for costs if possible. But that is just a gut reaction, no research done on my part.
+1 to Newton Mom, but it’s not just about being green. Is it really that easy to drop kids off at school with the traffic? I dread driving anywhere near my kids’ schools. Instead of fees, we should be looking for incentives to get kids out of cars. With proper support from the city, walking or taking the bus should be better for child development, better for our community, and hopefully easier on the parents as well.
fignewtonville, I don’t think bus fees, even at their current level, come close to paying for the buses. Someone with real numbers, feel free to jump in, but I think subsidies are still involved, just not to the same level as when buses were free. As you rightly point out, though, we ought to be concerned about the financial impact of these arbitrary fees on school families but also the external costs on the rest of the community. Parking is one thing, but what is the cost of gridlock on Newton’s major roads at morning rush hour? How do we even put a dollar figure on that?
Adam, with regards to “feel free to jump in with real numbers”, busing fees only cover ~23% of school bus transportation costs. Busing fees have never historically covered more than 20-25% of school busing costs. The school system prices it below cost precisely to get kids out of cars and to mitigate drop-off traffic.
Thanks, Joshua. Though historically, there were no bus fees at all, and many neighborhoods of course didn’t need the buses because they had local schools. Commenting on the proposed Upper Falls elementary in Saturday’s Globe, THM almost nails it:
The trend away from neighborhood schools is troubling for many reasons (community and logistics) but bus transportation and associated costs aren’t the reason why we’d build the school. Most people aren’t opting for the bus anyway.
There are two major issues: 1) school traffic and 2) safety at the Parker/Rt 9 intersection. I suggest that the most reasonable path forward is to shape a compromise solution that minimizes traffic impact, without ignoring intersection safety. For example, make the lights flashing from 715AM-830AM so that traffic flow on Parker is minimally affected. Turn the lights on at all other times (except perhaps during school pickup in the afternoon, say 230-330PM ). Wouldn’t that be better that what we have now, but still ensure order at the intersection for most of the day?
People may argue about the effect on Rt 9 traffic, problems taking a left onto Parker, etc, but no solution is perfect. It would be reasonable to suggest to the relative minority of people needing to take a left onto Parker that they find alternative commuting routes during the time window when the lights are flashing, or use this route when the signals are active (outside of the school dropoff window).
As others have pointed out, the simple truth that there is way too much traffic around school drop off times. Common sense dictates that adding a signal light under this circumstance will worsen the traffic problem, not alleviate it. No amount of signal light re-timing will solve this, because it doesn’t address the root cause – there’s too much traffic. Newton Mom had some great suggestions about how to address that issue. The signal light doesn’t help, it just magnifies the problem.
Overall, add me to the list of disappointed citizens. The traffic snarl the light created around school drop off times is ridiculous, predictable, and dangerous. Most disappointing is that our city leadership has not communicated the thought process more clearly. All I’ve read from the city in public forums/newspapers/emails was that there was a safety problem at the intersection and it needed to be addressed. Is it too much to ask that our aldermen/mayor address the issues involved here in a more sophisticated manner? We deserve better than the Tarzanesque, “see accident, add signal light.”
Surely we can do better than just fiddling with the timing of the lights. Let’s be more creative, please! I’ve made one suggestion above – there must be others that are not polarizing and negative towards commuters, students, or fellow citizens. What we need are innovative solutions that improve on the naive actions that DPW and city hall have taken.
P.S. Because of the traffic and our low confidence in city leadership, my family is reluctantly considering moving from our house on a side street off of Parker. Hopefully some actions will come that improve the situation.
A quick comment on bus fees. I think they are a point of inequity because not everyone in the city lives within walking distance of the school they are assigned. The fees were a result of the CAG report after the failed override several years back. Definitely something that should be factored into the buffer zone & redistricting discussions. I personally would be happy to see them go.
That said I don’t believe fees are a major factor for people who are choosing to drive their kids over taking the bus. The bus costs $310 a child, with a family cap of $620. That is $1.72/$3.44 a day. AAA puts the cost of driving based on car type between 46.4 and 65.3 cents a mile. Unless you are driving a boat load of kids to school and doing it on your way to work, you are likely spending more that you are saving. Not to mention the aggravation of fighting the traffic around the schools. I think parents are driving because they don’t like the alternatives. Check out the NSHS PTO newsletter. There is an ad from a family looking to hire a student to drive their child to school. They have to be looking to pay more than $1.72 a day. Also, bus ridership did not decrease when the fees were introduced. Strong indications that the fee is not what is keeping kids off the bus.
I agree with Alicia that parents are driving primarily because they don’t like the alternatives, but I also think bus fees play a role in our whole school transportation picture. First, the major issue is that the bus is inconvenient, particularly at the middle and high school level. By design, there are very few stops, and none less than 2 miles from school. So you can live too far to walk but too close to get a bus without going a mile in the other direction – often by car. And most parents probably don’t make that cost per mile calculation – they just weigh writing a big fat check for $620 for something that’s inconvenient at best, versus driving door to door, which seems like a sunk cost. And the buses that do run are not empty – they are often overcrowded, with 3 kids to a seat even in high school and kids sitting on the floor, which is beyond unsafe. (Many families don’t even bother to buy passes, since they are rarely if ever checked, which contributes greatly to the overcrowding.) I know of families who have purchased bus passes in the past but now drive because of the overcrowding issue. If Newton expanded the bus routes, eliminated the overcrowding, and added stops within the >1mile radius around the schools, making the bus more convenient for kids and parents, I think ridership would go up significantly, even if we retained more modest bus fees.
Have things gotten any better at the Parker St. intersection in the past month?
No, northbound still backed up halfway to Dedham St. around school hours.