Traffic Congestion, Safety Concerns Lead to Removal of New Pedestrian Crossing at Wolfson
The new school year got off to a slow start for staff and families at Samuel W. Wolfson School for Advanced Studies as traffic features installed over the summer in front of the school on Powers Avenue caused traffic congestion and raised safety concerns.
District 3 School Board Member and Wolfson parent Cynthia Pearson said she first saw the construction as she dropped off her daughter for soccer camp and began making inquiries with the school principal, chief of police and Duval County Public School (DCPS) Facilities Department to see what she could learn about the incoming changes, which, once completed, were a raised concrete median and crosswalk.
“From the DCPS side, we really didn’t have advance notice that this was happening and didn’t understand the rationale for the placement of the median where it was in front of the school,” she said.
As families returned to campus for orientations ahead of the new school year, Pearson began seeing posts on social media about the traffic features; some expressed concerns over the impact they would have on safety and traffic flow while others asked if anything was being done about them. Wolfson’s PTSA encouraged people to submit their concerns to Pearson via e-mail.
“From that, I think I ended up with about 80 parent e-mails from the beginning of school through the first week of school and into the second,” Pearson said.
Pearson reached out to her city council counterpart, District 5 City Council Member Joe Carlucci, for assistance. Carlucci connected with the Traffic Engineering Division and advocated for the median’s removal prior to the beginning of the school year. Though that request was denied, Carlucci said the division agreed to “have another conversation” if the traffic features were causing problems.
As the school year started, Pearson documented traffic conditions in the morning and afternoon and drove various routes to the school during those peak drop-off and pick-up times in order to have an idea of what people were experiencing. She sent that documentation and feedback on to Carlucci, who had also begun receiving e-mails regarding the situation.
“Traffic Engineering was out there four different times – two times in the morning and two times in the afternoon – to monitor traffic flow, make sure there weren’t any queues of long lines and it obviously proved to be unsafe and caused a lot of long lines and long queues that were just unnecessary,” Carlucci said.
Pearson said that throughout the process of her collaborating with Carlucci and him, in turn, working with the city traffic engineers, her question was, “Why there?”
In an e-mail, City of Jacksonville Traffic Engineering Division Chief Christopher W. LeDew wrote, “The location for the crosswalk was determined during the Traffic Engineering review of the residential development that is being built east of Powers Ave. across the street from Wolfson High School. Traffic Engineering asked the developer to provide a pedestrian crosswalk at the front of the school.”
“The original concept was to have the pedestrian crosswalk align with the front doors of the school, where sidewalk exists. The final plan shifted the crosswalk to the south to avoid a JTA bus stop. This change made the left-turn out of the parent drop-off loop driveway more difficult. Traffic Engineering received many complaints, observed the turning movement conflicts, and decided to remove the pedestrian crossing to improve vehicular safety,” it further read.
LeDew added that while the developer paid for the installation of the traffic features, which were requested by the city, the City of Jacksonville would be assuming the costs for the removal. There are currently no plans to reinstall these features at another point along Powers Avenue.
According to LeDew, removal work is being scheduled during the holiday break in December “for safety reasons to avoid traffic congestion during school times.”
The Resident News reached out to the developer for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading... 
