When Melissa Oliveira's son, Gibson, was struck by a vehicle near the intersection of Stanford Avenue and Escondido Street shortly after school got out on Sept. 8, the reaction from the parent community was swift, loud and persuasive.

Over the next two weeks, Oliveira and other Escondido Elementary School parents — mostly moms — submitted emails and attended public hearings to lobby the city and Palo Alto Unified School District to implement various safety measures to protect their children from cars.

The wish list included installing a crossing guard in front of Escondido, modifying traffic signals and exploring new policies to get children away from the sidewalk where they congregate before school starts and inside the school gates.

The surge of constructive outrage proved effective. Within days, officials from the city, the school district and Stanford University, which is adjacent to Escondido, toured the site to evaluate conditions and discuss solutions.

On Sept. 21, the day after the site visit, a committee of City Council members and school board members heard testimony from a group of concerned parents, including Oliveira, urging action. Jill Paldi, president of Escondido School PTA, said the community is asking for improved safety so that parents can feel confident sending their kids to and from school.

"Having a main entrance of PAUSD's largest school on this busy thoroughfare is unacceptable," Paldi said. "In fact, it's an incredible liability and we need an immediate solution."

Oliveira suggested that the traffic patterns may have been partly to blame for what happened to her son. The intersection of Escondido has two crosswalks, which form an L-shape. The traffic lights pattern is set up to give a long green light in the morning, allowing students to get through both crossings without stopping.

It's also not uncommon for someone crossing to take a diagonal route across Stanford Avenue, which is what Oliveira said her son was doing when he was hit by a car that she said threw him 10 feet and "rag-dolled him across the street."

"So unfortunately that happened, but he had his helmet on and it saved his life, and it's a miracle," Oliveira said.

City staff and members of the City/School Liaison Committee, which consists of council and school board members, signaled that they plan to act quickly. City Manager Ed Shikada said staff is "poised to be able to take actions quickly" and Council member Pat Burt talked about the need to "push aside any bureaucratic barriers that might normally exist so that we can make them happen quicker."

School board member Todd Collins concurred.

"Sometimes you have to go fast; sometimes you have to go slow," Collins said. "This strikes me as a time when we try to figure out where our go-fast ability is and see if we can have an expedient approach that addresses the need in the short term while … (giving) us time to find a longer-term approach, which we're set up to do."

They had good reasons for urgency. Six days after the Escondido accident, a middle-school-age boy in south Palo Alto was making a left turn on South Court at about 5:47 p.m. when he was struck by an eastbound SUV that got into the right lane to pass a car that was trying to turn left, according to the police. More than a week later, the boy was still in critical condition, according to the police.

The two accidents prompted Mayor Lydia Kou and Police Chief Andrew Binder to issue a joint statement on Sept. 15 listing the various actions that the city is taking to promote traffic safety. This includes having overtime traffic enforcement around schools, reviewing traffic controls and reviewing how the city deploys the roughly 30 crossing guards whose contract the Police Department manages.

"Community safety is our number one priority," Kou and Binder said in the statement. "With schools back in session, we must all heighten our awareness and support the safety of our streets."

The city and the school district reacted to the pleas and the crashes by adding a crossing guard at the intersection of Stanford and Escondido on Sept. 26. Prior to the move, the school's designated crossing guard was stationed a few blocks east of the school, at the busy intersection of Stanford and El Camino Real.

But at a Sept. 28 meeting focused on traffic safety near schools, numerous parents suggested that this move is not enough. They complained about the many drivers who misbehave as they drive down Stanford. Parents brought up instances in which bicyclists were hit or nearly hit by drivers who were either speeding, running a traffic light or simply not paying attention.

"My son was almost hit by a car at the stop light at Stanford and Escondido, and I've seen countless close calls," Nova Jimenez, who has a child at Escondido, told the City/School Transportation Safety Committee.

Police statistics also suggest that traffic collisions are on the rise citywide. Palo Alto Police Lt. Ben Becchetti reported that there were about 60 collisions in August this year, a month that he said typically sees around 40 collisions. At least six of them involved vehicles colliding with bicycles, he said.

Becchetti vowed to have a greater police presence at Escondido to both enforce traffic and to help parents and children cross the street during busy times. He noted that Sg. Ken Kratt, who is part of the department's traffic team, has been at the site several times to observe the conditions.

He also noted that Escondido is one of few schools that is not part of the department's "Adopt a School" program, which assigns officers to particular schools for patrolling during the busiest times in the morning and the afternoon. He said the department will make the change.

"There will be more police presence, and they will be out there educating and addressing the issues," Becchetti said.

IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS

While the city has added a crossing guard at Escondido, the school district began to open the gates to the school earlier in the morning to reduce crowds of students gathering near the streets.

"We're not getting a congestion of kids, which is great," said Eric Holm, the school district's manager of facilities and construction. "We're getting them earlier so they're not out in the sidewalks."

Philip Kamhi, the city's chief transportation official, said the city has also launched in collaboration with Stanford University a "warrant analysis" to determine whether the crossing guard should be a permanent presence near the school.

The city's policy for installing crossing guards includes specific standards that consider factors such as the number of elementary school age pedestrians who use the intersection, the level of vehicle traffic, whether these areas include stop signs and traffic signals and the number of vehicle turning movements.

Kamhi told the Palo Alto Weekly that the study is expected to be completed by mid-October. While in the past, Escondido did not meet the requirements, he said at the Sept. 28 meeting that that might change.

"Even though it wasn't in the past, we're checking it again," Kamhi said. "We're doing the work to evaluate it. It could be that it's recommended … especially given the current circumstances."

The city is also taking another look at traffic signals at Escondido and Stanford, which currently have an "exclusive pedestrian" phase that allows pedestrians at this T-intersection to cross in both directions in one go during busy school hours.

Throughout the rest of the day, the signals have normal operations in which pedestrians must wait for a go signal at both lights and vehicles experience less delays.

Kamhi said that the review will look at the schedule of the exclusive-pedestrian phase so that it better aligns with the school's bell schedule.

Rafael Ruis, senior engineer with the city's Office of Transportation, said staff evaluated traffic signals after the collision to confirm that they are working as intended (they are, he said). He noted that the city is also exploring other changes to traffic signal timing to better take account of the new crossing guard who is charged with helping students get across both streets.

"A lot of times when we have a crossing guard and the exclusive (pedestrian), we try to coordinate those to operate together," Ruis said.

THINKING AHEAD

While parents have applauded the recent addition of a crossing guard at Escondido, not everyone is thrilled about some of the broader changes that are now being undertaken by the school district to address recent concerns.

One action that Holm said the district is advancing in coordination with Stanford is restriping the Escondido parking lot and changing the circulation so that there would be one lane leading into the parking entrance instead of two.

The changes, he said, will be made in the next few weeks. Once they are implemented, cars entering the parking lot from the Stanford University side will come in through a single lane and then split once they get to the parking entrance, he said.

"It will mean that there will be a change to how cars will pull in," Holm said.

This action came as a surprise to Penny Ellson, who for decades has been on the forefront of the Safe Routes to School effort, a collaboration by the city, the school district and parents to promote bike and pedestrian safety. When Ellson asked Holm what process the school district used to approve these changes, he could not provide an answer.

"When something like this happens, there's always a call for immediate actions, and that's not how we work in Safe Routes to School," Ellson said in an interview.

Like others, Ellson said that solving the problem at Escondido will require more than installing a crossing guard. It would also take engineering solutions and education. Arriving at these solutions, however, will take analysis collaboration between the stakeholders.

She suggested that the school district's recent unilateral moves to change the gate times and traffic circulation short-circuited the regular process.

"It took us probably 15 years to get to a place where in 2006 we got the school district and the city to agree to a partnership — an agreement that we'd all work in partnership together so that changes to school sites that affect circulation and bike parking an automobile parking would be reviewed by committee," Ellson said. "In this instance, the gates were closed and the collaboration hasn't happened."

School Superintendent Don Austin told the Weekly that the district deeply values student safety and is "actively collaborating with the city of Palo Alto to enhance traffic safety measures, including allocating additional crossing guards."

"Ensuring the well-being of our students involves multiple facets, such as safe crossing, student education, and monitoring of drop off and pick up driving behaviors," Austin said in an email. "We appreciate the city's commitment and partnership."

But partnerships by nature require more time deliberation, which may rankle those who demand fast action. City officials warned parents at the Sept. 28 meeting not to rush to conclusions when presenting their proposed safety measures, which included everything from eliminating parking along Stanford Avenue to adding regulations for the multi-use path along Stanford Avenue for school commuters.

"You don't need to provide the solution. You just need to tell us what the problem is," Sylvia Star-Lack, the city's transportation manager, told the audience at the meeting. "Describing the problem well may help us think of appropriate tools that maybe parents aren't aware of."

CREATING AN ACTIVE YET SAFE CITY

The big-picture solutions — including new bike lanes, traffic-signal changes and other measures — will be explored over the next two years as part of two separate but related planning efforts that the city is just now kicking off.

These two efforts, known as Active Palo Alto and Safe Palo Alto, will also both test the partnership of City Hall, the school district and the PTA community. In both cases, parents will have a chance to weigh in on what they deem to be the city's most problematic intersections and propose solutions.

Active Palo Alto is the city's update to its bicycle and pedestrian master plan, which the council adopted in 2012. The plan helped launch a series of bike-improvement projects throughout the city, including the recently constructed bike bridge over the U.S. Highway 101 and the somewhat contentious traffic circle on Ross Road, near East Meadow.

Ozzie Arce, senior transportation planner who is leading the effort, said the update will look at all of the city's biking facilities as well as recent trends such as e-bikes and micromobility, which includes scooters, electric skateboards and other lightweight modes of transportation. Active Palo Alto will also consider infrastructure solutions like new bike lanes and ways to enhance programs like Safe Route to School.

"It's recognizing that in today's world we're not just biking and walking — there's scooters and other types of facilities as well," Arce said.

Safe Palo Alto, meanwhile, focuses primarily on reducing injury collisions for all modes of transportation, including vehicles. That effort, which Star-Lack is spearheading, came out of the council's decision to endorse a "safe system" approach earlier this year.

The plan, she said, will "recommend projects and programs for all modes that will impact student safety." (Residents can learn more about these efforts, fill out surveys and contribute to an interactive map at cityofpaloalto.org/activepaloalto).

"This is really a reorientation of how to approach safety on our transportation network," Star-Lack said at the Sept. 28 meeting.

Kamhi noted that the plan will not only give the community a chance to propose new improvements, it will also allow Palo Alto to apply for grants to help implement these solutions.

"It's to steer away from preventing collisions to preventing injury collisions, but it will also allow us to compete for funding that previously we wouldn't be allowed to be eligible for," Kamhi said.

The two planning efforts offer the city and the school district an opportunity to take a more deliberative approach to a problem that everyone agrees is urgent, even as they rush to respond to immediate concerns from parents.

They will also create an opportunity to reinvigorate the Safe Routes to School partnership, which was formalized in 2006 but which Ellson believes did not work as intended in the recent Escondido debate.

She noted that the district had initially opted to keep the gates closed for longer periods of time because of concerns about campus security. While that's an important consideration, Ellson said she was disappointed that the district did not consider traffic safety concerns when making that decision.

"We need to be looking at a big picture as a team," Ellson said. "I think we need our school board and superintendent to direct their staff to collaborate with the Safe Routes to Schools team around keeping school commutes safe.

"We need to revisit the 2006 partnership resolution and maybe update it so it's relevant to what needs to be done today."

Oliveira agreed that now is the perfect time to rethink — and strengthen — the partnership involving the city, the school district and Stanford to improve safety. Oliveira said in an interview that she believes that safety for children has not been prioritized in recent years. If you talk to people at a cocktail party, she said, just about everyone has a story about a child who had been hit by a car.

After attending the Sept. 28 meeting, she said she was encouraged by the two new planning efforts that the city is now advancing. Every neighborhood, she said, should be surveying its streets and identifying hot spots so that they can be addressed in the forthcoming plans.

"I think this is a great positive momentum in the right direction," Oliveira said. "Which is to say, safety is not a political issue. But we have a lot more to do."