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School bus travel plan continues to spur objections in Peters Township

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 3 min read
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Residents of Peters Towship’s Orchard Hilands neighborhood continue to express objections to buses from nearby McMurray Elementary School traveling on their streets.

Township council approved a request July 27 by Peters Township School District administration to permit 10 buses to leave McMurray on weekday afternoons through an access point that is gated and normally used only for emergencies.

The exit takes the vehicles onto Meadowbrook Circle and Orchard Hilands Drive, which intersects with Bebout Road at what usually serves as the sole vehicular ingress and egress for the neighborhood.

Routing some of the McMurray buses through Orchard Hilands is intended to help mitigate traffic congestion after school. In connection with COVID-19 safety precautions, district officials encouraged parents to provide transportation for their children as a way to ensure proper social distancing on the buses.

Residents of the neighborhood voiced their concerns about the bus plan during the Aug. 17 Peters Township School Board meeting, and they did so again at council’s meeting the following Monday.

“The roads are such that it’s unsafe to send a large number of buses through the neighborhood. They’re narrow. There are some blind corners,” Patrick Ogburn of Highvue Drive said. “There’s a lot of foot traffic in our neighborhood.”

Meadowbrook Circle resident Steve Simko presented a petition against the plan bearing 120 signatures, after passing along a similar document to the school district.

“I think a lot of our neighborhood was disappointed that we were not engaged in part of a conversation prior to receiving a letter saying that this was mandated,” he said of the notification that came from the township.

Samantha McVicker of Ridgeview Drive told council about what had transpired earlier Monday, which represented students’ return to Peters Township schools for the first time since March 13. Among other aspects, she said buses exiting McMurray Elementary were delayed because of vehicular congestion.

According to township manager Paul Lauer, traffic on East McMurray Road, the main access to McMurray, was backed up both before and after school.

“What we intend to do with all of the school locations is to spend this first week looking at them and analyzing them to find out what makes sense in the case of each of them, including the situation here,” Lauer said.

“From my perspective, if the buses passing through the neighborhood solve a problem, then that’s something I think we should be doing,” he continued. “But if it doesn’t solve a problem – if, in fact, all of the buses are so tied up that it makes no difference that they exit out in that direction – then we ought not to do that.”

He pointed out East McMurray Road serves as access for all the township’s emergency service agencies.

“So when this is backed up and nothing is moving at all, you can’t get an ambulance out,” he said. “You can’t respond with the police department or the fire department.”

As such, a solution is necessary, and he said school district officials will be working with the township on ways to lessen the twice-a-day traffic.

“What occurred at McMurray Elementary cannot be the norm. We cannot go a school year with traffic like that. It’s not safe for anybody,” Lauer said, acknowledging because Monday did mark the start of the school year, and under abnormal circumstances, “You can’t go by what happened today.”

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