District 220 Addresses Barrington High School Traffic Issues
Part two in a series about traffic problems surrounding the Barrington 220 School District.
Miss Part One? Read about the traffic issues surrounding the school district.
Traffic concerns surrounding the village of Barrington and District 220 are very real, but perhaps the biggest traffic issues deal with Barrington High School.
A large part of the problem is the sheer size of the high school. With more than 3,000 students, 200 staff members, and various other people coming and going from the school about the same time each weekday, traffic is bound to get tied up.
“When we have three or four commuter trains coming through, and you also have some two-lane roads, the variety of circumstances mean you have a lot of traffic in one place early in the morning,” Barrington 220 Superintendent Dr. Tom Leonard said.
Vehicle traffic isn’t the only problem. Although Barrington High School is located along busy Lake Cook and Hart roads, there are a fair number of walkers who need to get to school on time as well.
“They are walking in the morning when it’s still dark out. There’s a significant number of kids walking on a narrow road and it’s not very easy by the CN tracks,” Leonard said, referring to the Canadian National Railway.
These issues aren’t unique to the Barrington 220 School District. Traffic problems at BHS are very similar to other high schools nearby.
“Drive by Stevenson, Highland Park, Lake Zurich high schools in the morning and you’ll see almost an identical situation,” Leonard said.
The traffic problems are real in town, and they leave many wondering what is being done to solve them.
“There are some ideas that we are having conversations about. A lot of it would require some significant facility changes, or the ability to expand schools which is not something anyone is crazy about in any of these neighborhoods,” Leonard said. “We watch it and we try our best to navigate the traffic as best we can. We’ve made changes at Prairie, the high school, and Lines as far as rerouting the traffic. Changes are getting in place for Rose Elementary. Some schools, because of the layout and what we have in terms of the land space, we have a few more options than other schools.”
In This article
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Barrington 220 School District
310 James St, Barrington, IL -
Barrington High School
616 W Main St, Barrington, IL -
Barrington Village Hall
200 S Hough St, Barrington, IL
John S
10:33 am on Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Something needs to be done to get traffic moving through or around the town. Do that and the schools won't have a problem. This area is so poorly planned and haphazardly built, that I'm afraid it is too late to do anything.
I don't see any new roads being built with all the money in that area to fight it.
Mary Ann O'Rourke
3:58 pm on Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Couldn't Hart Rd. be widened to two lanes using District 220 property? That's a huge bottleneck every morning and evening backing up on to Lake Cook.
Shayne
1:14 pm on Friday, February 24, 2012
My suggestion is building a stop light at the lake cook rd entrance and making that an entrance and exit for the parking lots closest to lake cook. Instead of directing all the traffic around the building to the one exit that includes traffic from the lots by lake cook, behind the building, and the huge problem the student lot, not to mention the busses too
sf
7:43 am on Friday, February 22, 2013
What about opening the gated area to the subdivision for buses and staff exit only. Put a temporary light. I.e. a traffic light on a generator/ similar to a light plant on lake-cook and hager (I think) . This could be used by the village for other events and eliviate some traffic to hart rd.