Schools

Barrington 220 School District Beset by Traffic Headaches

Part one of a series on motorist and pedestrian traffic in the Barrington 220 School District.

Combine Route 59, Lake Cook Road, two railways, and lots of cars, and traffic jams are bound to happen in the . Many blame backups on rush hour alone, but some say there’s more to the problem.

Driving past in the morning or when school lets out can be a nightmare. It’s a similar story at both Barrington Middle School campuses and several of the elementary schools in town. The delays are due to a number of reasons — one being the increased number of students being driven to school by a parent instead of taking the school bus.

Many of the schools in are what many refer to as “neighborhood schools.” They were built in an era when not as many parents drove their children to school each day, so the facilities can’t accommodate the excess traffic.

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“At some of the schools, the turnarounds aren’t as easy,” explained District 220 Superintendent Dr. Tom Leonard. “A lot of people converging in the same location at once makes it difficult.”

One of the solutions to the traffic problem is to encourage more parents to have their students ride the bus or walk to school.

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“Would it decrease traffic going into schools? Absolutely. The buses are going to run there whether they are 80 percent full or 30 percent full.”

Although getting students to ride the bus seems like an easy enough fix, Leonard said the school bus issue is more complex than it may seem.

“There are a lot of factors here because people have the individual rights to do what they want to do,” he said. “Parents will make individual decisions based on their child’s needs.”

The traffic issue is not something that has been ignored by the district or the village over the years. The problem has sparked an ongoing conversation among school and village officials over what can be done to help mitigate the traffic. 

“We have rerouted some of the buses, we’ve rerouted some of the parent traffic in terms of how they come through,” Leonard said. “It’s something we recognize is a problem and we are a part of it.”

Leonard said motorist and pedestrian traffic at Barrington High School is of greatest concern to the district. Read about the issues and what is being done about them tomorrow on Barrington Patch.


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