Anyone who lives in the area knows the impact school traffic has on our neighborhood. Thinking about taking Fulton or Hinson during school drop off or pickup hours? You’ll only make that mistake once!
Hyde Middle School has parents’ vehicles queued up all over the streets waiting to pickup students in the afternoon. Add onto it the traffic coming in from Sage students’ parents driving into the campus. Currently there are only 215 students enrolled at Sage Collegiate. With the proposed 3 story expansion, that number is expected to climb to 796.
Prior to city approval on this project, a 133 page traffic analysis was done. I would like to bring your attention to page 9 of the report, the current number of vehicles (at 215 students) and forecasted number of vehicles for when 796 students are attending.
When I was first presented with this data, I felt these numbers were inaccurate, so I did my own research, and as I expected, their current numbers were greatly underreported.
On October 24, 2023, I went out with my camera and recorded the number of cars entering the parking lot at morning drop-off and the number of cars leaving the parking lot at pick-up time. Here’s how they compare to the Kimley-Horn report:
AM traffic entering
Kimley-Horn: 125 vehicles
My observations: 150 vehicles
PM traffic exiting
Kimley-Horn: 76 vehicles
My observations: 130 vehicles
For reference, here are videos I took of both AM and PM traffic, feel free to count the vehicles yourself! Both videos are sped up 200% for ease of watching.
AM Traffic Entering Sage Collegiate
PM Traffic Leaving Sage Collegiate
I think it would be naive to think that the Kimley-Horn study accurately predicts the future number of vehicles since the data they started with is grossly underreported. Not to mention, the traffic study they did only looked at the impact of vehicles on both Hinson and Charleston, and as us neighbors know, the whole neighborhood is affected by this.
Please join us in voicing concerns to the school and the city. It’s time to get involved!