City floats school traffic safety measures

Parents who drop their children off at Seacliff Elementary School may have an easier time in the near future, as the city has floated plans to eliminate a traffic lane on Garfield Avenue by the school and replace it with a parking lane.

Bob Stachelski, the city’s transportation manager, said his staff was working with the Orange County Transportation Authority on the plan and hoped to have approval from the authority next week. A number of parents have approached the city and school district in recent weeks to discuss improving traffic flow outside the school at 6701 Garfield Ave.

“Our preference is whatever works for everybody,” Stachelski said. “We’re going to do our best to make it work.”

Seacliff parent Gary Stenlund, a member of the school’s site council, said he has been pushing for years to improve the traffic situation around the school. In recent years, he has successfully lobbied the city to paint green curbs on Garfield Avenue, which allow for a few minutes’ parking, instead of the previous red ones. Another parent, he said, has offered to provide asphalt to help double the size of the school’s parking lot.

Since parking is not allowed on Saddleback Lane, which intersects Garfield in front of the school, most parents either park in the nearby neighborhood or drop their children off in the parking lot or along the north side of Garfield, Stenlund said. With so many cars competing for a small space, he believes, accidents are likely to happen.

“Right now, we have a whole tsunami of parents” passionate about the issue, Stenlund said.

One possible solution floated by the city is to divert cars into the bus drop-off zone on Saddleback, an arrangement that Stenlund called potentially dangerous for the pedestrians, bicyclists and horse riders who often use the street. Stachelski said the city had no plans at this point to open up Saddleback as a drop-off zone, but noted that some parents had requested it.

Stenlund and City Councilman Joe Carchio said their preferred solution would be to paint green curbs on both sides of Garfield, which would prevent parents having to make a U-turn to drop off children. The council, Carchio said, would likely vote on the issue in the future.

“I think the safety of the kids is the most important thing, and obviously, in the morning, parents are rushed,” he said. “They need to get to work and drop the kids off, and sometimes, when you’re rushing like that, if you don’t think about how the parents are going to drop the kids off, it could end up being a situation that’s not in the best interests of the parents and the children.”