City may use more signs, crossing guards and other safety measures near schools in Newport Heights

Newport Beach is considering more signage, newly defined pickup and drop-off zones, more crossing guards and educational campaigns in an effort to improve children’s safety in the congested areas around three schools in the Newport Heights neighborhood.

The city has been studying traffic, parking and driver and student behavior in the neighborhood just north of Mariners Mile. Newport Heights Elementary, Ensign Intermediate and Newport Harbor High schools are all within a 1-mile radius and have about 4,300 students among them.

Traffic in Newport Heights, and how children can be affected by it, has weighed heavily on local residents’ minds since 8-year-old Brock McCann was struck and killed by a garbage truck as he rode his bike home from Newport Heights Elementary School in 2016.

Cars stop in travel lanes, blocking traffic, to pick up and drop off passengers, city traffic engineer Tony Brine told the audience at a forum held Wednesday to check in on preliminary findings of the study, which is still underway. Children of all ages, and sometimes their parents, often jaywalk, he said. Cars form long lines on 15th Street in the mornings at the elementary and high schools.

The gate to the bike corral at Ensign opens directly onto Irvine Avenue, spilling a stream of children into the intersection at Coral Place, Brine said. He’d like to move the exit onto Coral, a smaller street.

Newport Heights Elementary Principal Somer Harding said principals talk about student safety all the time and that she doesn’t “breathe very well from 2:45 to 3:30 p.m.,� immediately after school lets out.

She said everybody needs to contribute to keeping the routes to school safe, because no school, police or city representative can be everywhere at all times.

“I think everybody has to do their part to communicate to every other parent that they have to pay attention to what the rules are and not let their children out (midstreet) and not jaywalk,� Harding said.

Brine offered several possible remedies:

• Crossing guards at Santa Ana Avenue and 15th Street for the elementary school students and at Coral Place and Irvine Avenue for the middle-schoolers
• Signs to mark a pickup and drop-off area for Newport Heights Elementary on the north side of 15th Street near the school driveway, and on Coral Place and the north side of Cliff Drive for Ensign
• A new stop sign at Broad Street and Catalina Drive
• Several signs, including “Pedestrian crossingâ€� by the high school parking lot, “No pedestrian crossingâ€� on the median near Newport Heights Elementary’s driveway and “No stoppingâ€� on the north side of 15th east of Irvine Avenue
• Fresh high-visibility striping for the crosswalks around the elementary school and a new painted crosswalk by the high school parking lot

Brine added that the city has been talking with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District about rebuilding the elementary school parking lot and the high school lot on 15th to try to improve circulation.

He suggested switching the lemon-yellow school crossing signs to fluorescent yellow-green and working with the school district and Police Department to draw up a “Safe Routes to School� program that can be taught in classrooms or at assemblies. He also proposed removing parking on both sides of Clay Street between Santa Ana and Irvine avenues to make room for bike lanes.

A draft report of the complete study is expected to be available for public comment in late April before it goes before the City Council in May.

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