School Traffic

I remember the scene in Mr. Mom where the school crossing guard is explaining the drop-off/pick-up line to Michael Keaton. At the time I was in elementary school and I thought it was bizarre because everyone I knew walked to school. We didn't have an elaborate system for cars to navigate when picking up students. Occasionally a parent would pull up out front to get their child if it was raining or they had a dentist appointment after school. Now every school has a detailed guide for driving up to the school. Every year I have to sign a form promising to obey those guidelines.

Everyone picks their kids up. We don't have school buses for the city elementary schools. The county does bus all the students, but several choose to drive their own kids. If they didn't we would need double or triple the buses and I don't know of any school districts in the country who could swing that right now.

So we end up with traffic jams in our tiny town. Mostly this is because there is a one lane bridge going across the river. Notice that the traffic is only backed up on the side of the road where everyone has to merge. (Sorry such poor quality picture.) That is the middle school traffic. We don't have a middle school on our side of the river. Notice the other direction is pretty clear. That is the traffic going to the high school. They don't have a high school across the river. There are probably more cars going to the high school, but it doesn't back up because there are two lanes going over the river from that direction. Good reason to upgrade the northbound side of the bridge.

Until it gets fixed, we just make sure to leave early so we beat the traffic. You'd think living in a small town in the middle of nowhere you would be able to avoid traffic. Go figure.