Lack of school zone signs have parents worried for kids safety
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IDAHO FALLS– Parents are concerned about kids walking to and from school on Iona Road. There’s a lack of school zone signs in the area and hardly any sidewalks.
“I’d hate for somebody to die to finally get change,” parent Russell Miller says.
“Do we need flashing lights? Yes,” Bonneville Joint School District 93 Director of Safe Schools Gordon Howard says.
Give me a sign
Parents and district administrators want to bring more attention to the school zone area because of speeding cars. They are hoping to implement at least four flashing school zone signs.
“It’s almost a mile school zone, so to get people to stay in that 20 mph (zone) for that long a time is a challenge, especially when there’s no signage in between,” Howard says.
Howard says there have been some close calls within recent years.
“In front of Bonneville, that crosswalk’s had three students hit in the last two and a half years. No fatalities, thank heavens, and actually no real serious injuries although it’s always serious when that happens,” Howard says.
Right now drivers have trouble seeing the small school-zone sign that is positioned below other traffics signs on Iona Road.
“If you’re not looking carefully at the sign, you’re going to miss it, and it’s hard to read,” Miller says.
Where the sidewalk ends
Four schools are spread out on or near Iona Road including Bonneville High School, Rocky Mountain Middle School, and Discovery and Summit Hills elementary schools – that means a lot of foot traffic from surrounding neighborhoods. Miller’s kids will start walking to Discovery when the weather warms up.
“There’s no sidewalks that go across any of the intersections on their way to Discovery Elementary school, so they have to track across lawns,” Miller says.
Howard says development companies that are building in the area should be budgeting for sidewalks, and the district has no control over signs that are placed on county land. In an effort to solve both problems, the district with the county applied for a grant through the state to pay for flashing signs and a walking path on the north end of Iona.
“Our project was not ranked quite high enough to get into the funding amount that was available,” Bonneville County Assistant Public Works Director said Lance Bates says.
The grant ideally would have covered the project’s cost of $111,000, but Bates said the state only had a limited amount of funds to distribute to the Children Pedestrian Safety Project.
“Doing something from here on is kind of undetermined. The school districts can certainly spend the money and put the signs up if they have the money to spend, and the county, if they have the money to just designate it to a project like that, could probably do the same. Unfortunately, I don’t think either of us have this money sitting around waiting to be spent,” Bates says.