9 Sacramento schools on streets known for accidents to gain new pedestrian safety features

Nine Sacramento schools will soon get traffic improvements to help kids and parents get to class safely, the city announced on Thursday.

The city of Sacramento received $2.2 million in federal funding to improve pedestrian safety as a result of severe injuries and fatalities that have occurred in these areas.

The schools that will see improvements are Oak Ridge Elementary, Aspire Capitol Heights Academy, Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School, The Met Sacramento High School, St. Hope Public School 7 (K-8), West Campus High School, Natomas High School, Smythe Academy of Arts and Sciences, and William Land Elementary.

The city chose schools based on a number of factors, including looking at neighborhoods that had not received recent traffic investments.

The city also prioritized streets near schools with high numbers of serious traffic accidents. According to data from a state traffic database, 1,139 severe or fatal injuries occurred within a quarter mile of those nine school sites between 2009 and 2017.

These elementary schools, middle schools and high schools will gain high visibility school crosswalks such as rectangular rapid flashing beacons to improve biking and walking routes.

Other improvements include: pedestrian push buttons and countdown signals, speed bumps, pavement markings, rebuilt and painted curbs and extensions, bike lanes and bike lane buffers.

Several of the schools are in Oak Park and South Oak Park, areas that leaders say have lacked those safety features.

“We have looked at equity across the board in every sector,” said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento. “Whether it’s transportation, education, environment, health care, (there) are the disparities. We really have to work on ensuring that we understand and this is part of it.”

Sacramento City Unified School District Trustee Lavinia Phillips lives near 13th and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard and is a member of the neighborhood association.

She said she has been pleading for safety measures for four years after consistently seeing students dodging cars as they make their way to school every morning and back home in the afternoons.

“We’ve been talking about this for a long time. We’ve been doing surveys for a long time, and now this has come to fruition,” said Phillips. “My hope is that they move it as fast as they’re moving Aggie Square,” she said, referring to the $1.1 billion UC Davis development near the neighborhood.

In an effort to create safer streets and eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries, the city of Sacramento has also reduced the school speed limit to 15 mph at 115 schools on a total of 225 streets.