LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) Board is applauding the improvements to the bus routes to start off the school year, but now all eyes are turned to the car rider lines that are getting congested along the roads.
JCPS Chief Operations Officer Dr. Rob Fulk is looking at data for long-term solutions to the back-up of cars, but said the district needs more data beyond the nine days of school to come to those answers.
"What areas will work themselves out as parents get into a routine and a community gets into a routine, versus where we need to weigh in with more capital improvement," Fulk said.
The district has already started to implement changes, though, to help relieve some of the congestion.
"We have restriped several schools that are within the district," Fulk said. "We've had queuing lanes. For example, at Manual, a walking path, added lane delineators every 22 feet down the walking path. At Manual [we] added additional parking stalls on the campus, added campus directional arrows. If you look at Barrett, we took their bus rider lines, turned all their bus rider lines into car lines, so that we could stack onto the property."
And while cutting bus transportation service has certainly added to the traffic jams, Superintendent Marty Pollio said it's not just magnet or traditional schools seeing the impacts.
"We have about 155 schools; 24 of them lost transportation in some way or another," Pollio said. "So yes, there are traffic issues around those 24 schools. But, we are also getting a lot of communication and narrative that other schools that have traffic issues, who have a resides, it's because of loss of buses when that is not the case at all."
Former JCPS board member Sam Corbett said the long lines also stem from something deeper: families lack of trust in the transportation system.
"Convince parents and grandparents and family members that you can put your child on the bus in the morning and we'll get them home at a reasonable hour, then maybe you can go a long way towards eliminating some of these tremendous lines and wait times that we're seeing," Corbett said.
Corbett cited Chenoweth Elementary School, which is not a magnet school, as a specific example. He said parents and guardians lined up outside the school half an hour before school was dismissed, creating a line down Brownsboro Road a half mile long.
"It shouldn't be acceptable," he said. "You should not have to give up, in this case, an hour and a half of your day each afternoon five days a week in order to pick your child up."
Pollio addressed Chenoweth at the JCPS board meeting Tuesday, saying the back-up is caused by construction.
While some parents at both magnet schools and resides spend their time waiting in lines, Michael Jackson, who picks his grandson up from Hudson Middle every day, said that isn't the case for his family.
"It's definitely moving right along," he said. "Every day that school's out it moves right along. The line decreases pretty rapid."
Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.