A year ago, Paul Revere sixth grader Carlos Macario was killed in the crosswalk as he ran to catch the westbound MTA bus at the intersection of Sunset and Allenford. The tragedy was a grim reminder that this corner’a half block from the middle school that serves 2,190 sixth, seventh and eighth graders’is part of an overwhelming onslaught of traffic and congestion that plagues the neighborhood every school day. Now, a year later, little has changed. Traffic still backs up on Sunset in the morning and at dismissal, cars clog Allenford’the only access road to the school’and neighbors still complain about their inability to get in and out of their streets. Immediately after the accident last October, Revere principal Art Copper met with LAUSD representatives and West L.A. traffic officials to address the chaotic traffic situation that exists around the school at arrival and dismissal times. A number of suggestions to tame the traffic nightmare and remedy the dangerous situation were discussed, including strict enforcement of No Parking signs on Allenford, letters to parents urging carpooling, posting School Zone signs and conducting a Department of Transportation survey to determine the volume of traffic on Sunset. According to Mo Blorfroshan, DOT engineer, a three-day 24-hour traffic count conducted in June 2004 showed almost the exact same volume (25,170 vehicles) as the three-day count taken in November 2003 (25,242). Meanwhile a parent transportation committee, now under the leadership of Revere parent Sue Pascoe, has pursued ways to increase bus transportation to and from school, particularly for Palisades students, most of whom arrive or depart by private car. Although there are 22 LAUSD ‘yellow’ buses serving the school, these are designated for magnet school students, students who come from schools that are overcrowded, and those who are not otherwise served by transportation, as in the case of students who live in Topanga Canyon. At the afternoon dismissal, there is public bus service for homebound students. Three MTA ‘school trippers’ stop on Allenford; two travel westbound on Sunset to Marquez, and one travels eastbound toward Beverly Hills. Some students use the MTA commuter buses that travel east and west on Sunset in the afternoon, particularly if they have missed the school tripper or if those buses are overcrowded. Since the opening of Revere in 1955, housing has steadily grown in the Palisades, including the significant population in the Highlands, nearly 10 miles from the school. ‘There was never an adequate projection done about the number of students being added to both Paul Revere and Marquez Elementary,’ according to Pascoe. The school district stopped providing resident bus service in 1979, as a consequence of Proposition 13, but has reserved $16.7 million of its annual budget for Other Transportation Students, Pascoe told the Palisadian-Post. Antonio Rodriguez, LAUSD branch director of transportation, says that a few schools fall under the distance and hazard category, ‘in cases where there are no sidewalks on part of the walking route assigned to children, in which case the busing becomes necessary because of a safety issue.’ Pascoe cited the students who live near Chautauqua as qualifying for bus service under this category. ‘For most of the route [from Chautauqua to Allenford], the sidewalk is either a trail, a part of a sidewalk or a sidewalk that is directly next to the road, functioning as a shoulder for the road,’ she said. ‘And there are blind curves all along Sunset.’ In researching ways to provide more buses for students and thereby reduce the passenger car crush on Allenford, Pascoe investigated the idea of piggybacking on school bus service to and from Palisades High School. She soon discovered that the contract service, First Student Buses, could not provide a PaliHi bus early enough to accommodate Paul Revere students. They could provide an additional bus to Paul Revere, paid for by parents at a cost of $600 a year’an annual fee Revere booster club thought was ‘prohibitive for many families.’ Pascoe then contacted LAUSD to see if the district would contract their buses that arrive at PaliHi before 7:15 a.m. for Paul Revere, but ‘the district refuses to contract those buses out to parent groups because as a public entity they they would lose their tax and insurance status,’ she said. Having reached an impasse in trying to remedy the traffic crisis at Revere, Pascoe is appealing to the community to encourage school board member Marlene Canter to support busing students from the Palisades and Brentwood to Paul Revere. ‘Paul Revere is a school that is entitled to local busing because of the safety issue,’ Pascoe said.
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