W. Washington blocked off between Eighth and Ninth Streets. Would’ve been nice for residents to be warned ahead of time, Slauson and Ann Arbor Public Schools!
Washington & Eighth
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Camelsamba, about the city’s piece of this: The city does have some info channels that included information about the closure. For example, this page of the website: [link]. And you can subscribe to alerts on road closures here: [link] Facebook and Twitter had it, as well I think.
But ultimately, I don’t think very many people are going to take the constantly simmering soup of road closure information that gets pushed out (maybe a week ago), and then effectively ladle it into their own hyper-local bowl.
Ideally every household of a Slauson student would have received a targeted heads-up a couple of days in advance – but that’s more the bailiwick of AAPS than the city.
I encourage everyone to click on the little red envelope that sends you automatic emails about road closures. There are a lot of other categories, too, for these alerts. It is a very effective service and does not fill up your inbox too much.
(i’m camelsamba on twitter, fwiw, which is where this item came from)
This is not a city road closure. The city has closed 8th Street for some construction. That is safely marked, and I’ve been wondering all weekend what impact it will have on the Slauson busses.
Instead, this was Slauson staff dragging BLUE TRASH CANS out into the street to block it off. I doubt the city was aware it was happening; the city might at least have provided safety orange cans! I encountered it at 7:20 & ~7:35? when taking my oldest child to Pioneer (we have no viable bus solution from our house). At 7:50 when walking my youngest to AAOpen, I stopped and chatted briefly with one of the teachers who was manning the barricades. She was sympathetic to my complaint, implied they were trying to get parents to stop further away and have kids walk that last block in order to reduce the insanity in front of the building, also implied it was a last minute idea by the new principal.
There are serious traffic issues there every morning – most everyone who lives on Washington between 7th & Revena are aware of this, not to mention those who walk past that time of day. But what the school has chosen to do, by forcing people to stop / turn at 8th and 9th, is *force those problems back into the residential areas* which are not well suited for them. Might it make more sense to route those cars into, I don’t know, a *parking lot* which is designed to handle cars, instead of narrow residential streets on blocks where many households can barely fit 1 car in their short driveway? Granted, the Slauson parking lot is super small because of its age. But does it make more sense for people to stop in the middle of 8th Street – right in front of the Little Blue Preschool – and let their child off in the middle of the street? Can’t pull over to the curb because residents use it for parking, shouldn’t use LBP’s driveway because they aren’t LBP students. I’d suggest they let their kids walk to school, but since I drive one of mine to Pioneer due to timing/darkness and load (instrument+books+etc) that would be hypocritical of me.
So I suggest a couple of things:
- at the minimum, inform the neighbors of this additional morning burden
- form an ad hoc group *including neighbors* to find a more viable solution
in case I wasn’t clear: the Slauson ad hoc blockage was on *Washington* between 8th & 9th.
The city construction is on 8th, between Washington & Liberty.
Do the school buses still block the crosswalks at Ninth and Washington?
Update: I heard back from the principal. They were doing this in response to the closure of 8th Street (where buses usually park), although apparently the majority of buses were dropping off on Crest so it’s not clear what this was supposed to do. On Wednesday, they did not block off the street although their parking lot was still blocked off (which I really don’t understand).
Jim, the only busses that use Washington are the special needs one. This afternoon I looked over there and one was blocking the crosswalk. Of course half the time when they drive up, a car is waiting there despite the very clear signs that it is for busses only.