Dear Members of Belmont School Committee, Belmont Police, TAC, School Administration, and the Selectboard:

The new Belmont Middle and High School is a beautiful building filled with opportunities for our students.  However, traveling to and from the building has become increasingly unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians, and a congested nightmare for drivers and the neighborhood.  This problem existed before the opening of the middle school and was not resolved. It is now predictably worse with the addition of 7th and 8th graders trying to get to and from school.  Goden Street (and some surrounding streets) are particularly unsafe for our students because of the high volume of cars mixed in with lots of student cyclists and walkers. 

Our children are at risk of injury and death while trying to get to and from school.  At least three students have been hit by cars or car doors on Goden and Oak Street since last spring (two since this school year started). One child was seriously injured last spring when he was hit by a car and wound up head over heels onto the car windshield. At school opening and dismissal times (and into the early evening), Goden Street is backed up the entire length of lower Goden, including extending into the complicated offset intersection at Goden and School Streets. There is no crossing guard at that intersection, poor sight lines for drivers, and hundreds of students crossing in a complicated morass that is increasingly including frustrated, aggressive drivers.  What's more is that some drivers enter the fray of traffic heading down Goden to the school, drop off their children (often in the middle of the road) and then do a U-turn or turn into a driveway to avoid the rest of the traffic. This is particularly unsafe for children moving at high speed down the street on their bikes, it is unneighborly, and it causes further traffic gridlock. With the placement of the traffic light and the location of the school access road, Goden Street has effectively become the driveway to the school. This small residential street was not developed to be a major thoroughfare and it cannot safely accommodate this high volume of cars.

It is not acceptable to do nothing and just shrug our shoulders and say "I hope it's not my kid who gets hit." Residents have been expressing alarm and concern since the plan for the driveway and traffic light were unveiled at a public meeting in January, 2018.  And yet, no changes have been made to increase student safety, despite all the discussion.  This is a failure of leadership.  

It is imperative that you test solutions to this problem now. Solutions that should be considered and trialed include (but are not limited to):

1). Make Goden St. one way (at all times to prevent confusion) and a neighboring street one way going the opposite direction. This would control the flow of traffic in a loop, prevent dangerous driveway turn-arounds, give students more space to safely bike or walk to school, and remove one arm of the Goden/School St. intersection.

2). Place a crossing guard at the School/Goden St. intersection.

3). Consider no traffic zones around schools at select times of the day (as was successful in numerous other towns and cities). 

4). Create multiple safe drop-off spots further away from the school (for people coming from various directions) to disperse the traffic, encourage walking the last bit to school, and prevent drop-offs from happening in the most congested spots.

5). Improve the efficiency of the bus to/from school and provide incentives for children who bus, walk, or ride to school.

6). Hire an outside firm to make traffic pattern recommendations with the aim of improving safety (not the aim of moving cars faster through the areas where students are, as the original outside firm who recommended placement of the school driveway opposite Goden St. was tasked with).

It is not a question of if there will be another student accident, it is just a question of when it will happen.  The responsibility of making it safe for our children to get to and from school without risk of death or injury is on you.

What are you going to do immediately to improve student safety?

Sincerely,

The undersigned residents of Belmont