School loop road will go to council amid din
Marisa O’Neil
The debate about a loop road proposed to ease traffic problems at
Newport Coast Elementary School continued Monday, the eve before City
Council members will make a decision on its future.
At the meeting organized by city officials, parents and homeowners
in the area voiced their concerns for safety, traffic, pollution and
property values around the school, where they said chaos ensues at
pick-up and drop-off times. City council members will tonight vote
whether to accept a bid that would allow work to start on the road
next month and finish by Labor Day.
The item was continued from the June 8 council meeting to give
residents and city officials more time to explore other options. It’s
likely the council will vote to go ahead with the plan unless
residents are as vociferous with their opinions at tonight’s meeting
as they were Monday, Councilman Dick Nichols said.
“They want it to go ahead,” Nichols said of the City Council. “It
has a majority of people [supporting it]. If people don’t show up,
they won’t look at anything else.”
The city explored a variety of options, including placing a signal
at the school’s entrance on Ridge Park Road, prohibiting left turns
into the school and creating a left turn lane on busy Newport Coast
Drive, Public Works Director Steve Badum said. None but the loop road
proved feasible, he said.
The proposed road would run 1,100 feet from northbound Newport
Coast Drive, around the school’s playground and dump out into the
parking lot. It would be 20 feet wide with a sidewalk for parents to
drop students off if they choose not to wait in the queue and would
only be open for pick-up and drop-off times, about 90 minutes a day.
Some homeowners in the Tesoro gated community, which sits on a
ridge above the school and proposed road, worried that increased
noise, pollution and the sight of the road would decrease property
values.
One home in the community just sold for $1.7 million, resident
Mike Sheehan said. Sheehan lives in Tesoro and has a child who
attends the school but is opposed to the proposed road.
“I don’t think we’ve tried hard enough to operationalize and
enforce the rules,” he said of the current traffic problems.
Parents complained that traffic queues are so long, school buses
are sometimes late, and some people drop their children off across
the street. That creates more traffic problems and lots of
near-misses with children, cars and construction traffic speeding
down Ridge Park Road.
“Until you’ve got a physical change in the school site, all the
cops in the world can’t change the situation,” Newport Beach Police
Chief Bob McDonell said.
Tesoro resident Gary Pollard, who does not have a child at the
school, argued that the traffic around the school creates a greater
detriment to property values than a loop road would.
“This isn’t the best solution; it’s the only solution,” he said.
Newport Coast resident and parent Jean Donnelly said that if done
right, the road would be a good solution and create no more noise for
homeowners than the school bells and children playing on the field.
“If we could control the loop road and respect the homeowners, it
would work,” she said. “I don’t want to see a kid get killed, and
it’s this close to happening.”
* MARISA O’NEIL covers education. She may be reached at (949)
574-4268 or by e-mail at marisa.oneil@latimes.com.
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