Safe crossing for students
By Monty Tayloe
Last year, Eric Marx's 16-year-old son was walking home from McLean High School when a fast-moving car got too close.
“It broke his toe,” said Marx, glad for such a minor injury from what could have been a much worse situation.
A few months ago, Marx's neighbor Rick Jacobi got the same sort of scare when his teenage daughter was “bumped” by a car on her way to McLean High. Both families live in the neighborhoods off Westmoreland Street, just around the corner from the secondary entrance to McLean High, the one with the distinctive digital sign.
Opposite that sign a crosswalk crosses Westmoreland, a natural route for those walking to McLean High or to its athletic fields, just up Sea Cliff Road.
However, despite its obvious utility as a route to school, the crosswalk lies outside McLean High's school zone, meaning that cars driving on hilly, windy Westmoreland toward the crosswalk are driving at about 35 mph. That's too fast, Marx said.
“If the car that hit my son had been going 25, they would have had time to see him and react,” Marx said.
“We live so close to school, it's ridiculous for them to take the bus. They should be able to walk there,” Jacobi said.
As a solution to the problem of getting students safely across Westmoreland, the school has proposed a bus route in the neighborhoods around the school, but the idea presents practical difficulties.
“The kids are not going to walk the wrong direction to catch the bus 15 minutes earlier, when they could walk the same distance 15 minutes later and be at school on time,” Jacobi pointed out in an e-mail to school officials.
“I just want it to be safer,” said Jacobi, who favors extending McLean's school zone to include the crosswalk.
According to the School Board, school zones and crosswalks are controlled by the Virginia Department of Transportation and, in response to the complaints of Jacobi and others, Supervisor John Foust's (D-Dranesville) office has asked VDOT to study the area for a possible solution.
However, Foust staffer Tanya Cunha said it's possible that the crosswalk on Westmoreland could no longer meet VDOT standards, which could complicate things even further for McLean students on their way to school.
“Citizens have asked for something to be done here quite some time now,” Cunha said.