Jackson's growing schools prompt city to look at traffic solutions

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to say that the school district has gained roughly 500 students overall since the time of the last city traffic study.

The return of students to Jackson public schools brings with it an added traffic strain on intersections near the schools, but remedies may be on the horizon.

The first step in the city’s planned overhaul of its traffic study intends to focus on intersections that see high traffic from schools.

As Jackson grows, so too does the school district’s enrollment, said school superintendent John Link.

“We’ve got growing pains with traffic flow all across town,” he said. “As school starts, we start comparing numbers to see where we are as opposed to where we were.”

Jackson High School students turn onto West Jackson Boulevard at the end of the school day Friday in Jackson.Fred Lynch

Link said the district has 5,097 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, marking an increase of about 500 students since the time of the last city traffic study.

Getting those students to and from school every morning means thousands of bus stops and traffic from parents dropping off their children.

To deal with the increasing traffic, Jackson public works director Rodney Bollinger said the city is applying for funding through the Missouri Department of Transportation to help pay for engineering costs for a study.

The study would examine two intersection on the east side of Jackson.

The intersections of East Main Street and Shawnee Boulevard and Oak Hill Road are all-way-stop controlled and “subject to backups and congestion, particularly during school arrival and dismissal periods,” Bollinger said.

The engineering assistance program would reimburse the city for 80 percent of the project’s cost up to $8,000 if Jackson’s application is selected.

The study would be used to identify whether improvements are warranted and what those improvements might be.

Link agreed the intersections are problematic.

“Those two intersections in particular I came through a lot last year, and they do back up quite a ways,” he said.

The school district hopes to see eventual improvements, Link said, because collaborating with the city on traffic issues has worked in the past.

Last year’s construction of East Elementary, for example, caused an increase in traffic, Link said.

That’s where the school district moved its preschool and a lot of early childhood education. And whereas older students would be bussed in and out, the majority of the 270 students there are dropped off and picked up by parents.

But when the city installed a stoplight at East Main Street and Lacey Street to manage traffic flow, “it really made a difference with the amount of traffic on East Main Street,” Link said. “Traffic lights seem to work and make a difference.”

But any possible improvements won’t likely have much effect on the current school year. The city’s application will be submitted later this month, and if accepted, would be announced in October.

The city then would have to go through the process of hiring an engineering firm, meaning the study would be finished by spring 2017.

Even without the MoDOT reimbursement, however, Bollinger indicated the study would have to be done anyway in the near future, because the city still is using a traffic study from 2003 that Bollinger has called “outdated.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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