Page 60 - School Planning & Management, July/August 2017

FACILITIES THE K-12 PARKING PUZZLE
SCHOOL BUSES NEED PARKING, TOO
School buses, too, need parking place
to facilitate picking up and dropping off. “Buses, like cars, are getting larger today,” says Stephan C. Howick, RLA, LEED-AP, a landscape architect with Fanning Howey.
According to Howick, today’s buses can carry 70 students. Bigger buses mean fewer buses on the road — a safety consideration. Bigger buses also mean fewer buses to maintain, which lowers operating costs.
“Even so, we need adequate space for buses to drop off and pick up in school park- ing lots. That requirement calls attention to the important differences between the way buses work in the morning and afternoon.
“In the morning, buses do curbside drop off. There is no sequence to busing in the morning. The buses arrive when they arrive, and the students get off.
In the afternoon, however, when students are going home, the buses line up, always parking in the same places. The kids know where to go to find their own buses.”
In Howick’s district, the buses waiting
to pick up students after school line up at
a diagonal to the curb, but they remain far enough away from the curb to enable them to pull out forward — without backing up. “I think that setting up bus parking so that buses only move forward, never backward, is pretty standard operating procedure across the country,” Howick says. “I would recom- mend that districts that don’t have such a procedure consider adopting it.
“And when the buses leave the property in the afternoon, they pull off the property in a parade, stopping traffic. We do that because the faster the buses are on the road, the faster the kids get home.”
So, bus accommodations in school designs need to include areas for dropping off and picking up. But buses also need overnight parking accommodations, which district transportation facilities can often accommodate.
Overstriping: A school’s parking lot can do double duty when you overlay one parking configura- tion for buses and one for visitors and staff by overstriping, like in the photo above.
Another concern, brought about by the increase in parents driving their kids to school, is the poten- tially hazardous practice of cars queuing on public streets. To avoid this, make sure your parking lots and drop off lanes are large enough to accommodate the traffic.
LaPosta says. If they drive by a school with a parking lot that is mostly empty, they will notice and take it into consideration the next time they are approached about funding needs.
Parking Lot Design
Once there is a solid estimate of how much parking is needed, design consider- ations come into play.
First, where will you put the parking lot? LaPosta point out a chilling consider- ation. Since the Sandy Hook shooting and other tragedies experienced in schools, he says, access to parking and the location of parking lots are part of the safety planning for a school.
“At Sandy Hook, the criminal drove right up to the front door of the school,” LaPosta points out. “In light of that, a good rule to follow is to position parking so that it takes time to get from the parking area to the front door.
“Another benefit of such a design — which keeps car parking away from the front of the building — is that it enables first responders in police cars or fire trucks
to access the building. They can drive right up the front door.”
LaPosta also notes that by placing the lot a distance away, but still in full view of the front door, the front office and cameras at the front of the building can observe the parking area and perhaps identify trouble before it can get to the front door.
Another design consideration involves separating the parking areas used by teach- ers, students and visitors. Today, these areas are often physically separated. “The real concern here is visitors,” LaPosta says. “It’s important to be able to see people who don’t belong in the building and to make sure they don’t enter.
“This is all about preventing and deterring trouble. We want people to feel like someone is watching. It isn’t always about someone with a gun, either. Today, in schools with young children, officials must be sensitive to custody battles. Distance helps with that. If a non-cus- todial parent comes to school to see his or her child, sufficient distance out front provides time to react appropriately — to prevent trouble.” SPM
60 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / JULY/AUGUST 2017
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