Drivers, beware: Buses will be back on the roads
 

Last Thursday, Shawn Arevalo McCollough scanned busy McEver Road Extension from Gainesville Elementary, the school he soon will lead as principal.

The view took in an unpaved drive partly submerged under a muddy puddle, orange traffic barrels blocking the McEver entrance and ample evidence that the road itself is under construction. Yet McCollough wasn't concerned about drivers finding their way to the hilltop school.

Instead, he pointed to a long, looping front drive with plenty of room for parents packing children, a finished side entrance that connects the driveways and three parking lots, and a ready scheme to keep bus, staff and visitor traffic from tangling.

"The construction company has done a wonderful job getting the layout down and getting it functional for school," McCollough said. "We're going to be ready to go Day 1."

Hopefully, with school beginning Friday in Gainesville and Hall County, the same can be said for the driving community. The return to class of more than 26,000 students involves a range of transportation issues.

Jewel Armour, executive director of operations for Hall schools, cautioned thusly: Watch out for school buses. And heed traffic laws concerning them.

"We have a lot of cars that still pass buses while they're stopping and picking up students," Armour said. "In Hall County, it's just a problem we deal with on a daily basis."

Police and sheriff's officers will be out in force, many of them working traffic at school-year hot spots old and new, such as Gainesville Elementary.

"We just urge all the parents to leave a little earlier, and expect traffic," said 1st Lt. Jeff Strickland of the Hall County Sheriff's Office.

As for the new wrinkles:

  • To accommodate its "programs of choice," in which parents can send their children any of five elementary schools, Gainesville will bus students to the school in their transportation zone, then transfer them as needed by express bus. Also, routes have been changed and door-to-door stops dropped.

    The end result: Students will spend less time on the bus this year, said Janice Burns, director of maintenance and transportation.

     

  • Gainesville Elementary's McEver drive and a northbound deceleration lane leading to it will be open, said James Branson, assistant to the superintendent. The school also has an entrance off Spring Road.

    But state transportation department work to widen two-lane McEver (Ga. 53) to four lanes, from Browns Bridge Road (Ga. 369) to Dawsonville Highway, isn't due to be finished until February 2005. A median break is planned at the school and a traffic light at Spring Road.

     

  • Work to rebuild the Falcon Parkway intersections at Hog Mountain and Martin roads in southern Hall should be almost complete, with signals operational, in a few weeks, county engineer James Miller said. Both areas have been a traffic headache for nearby Martin Elementary, Davis Middle and Flowery Branch High.

    The realignment of Martin Road lengthened both driveways to Martin Elementary, and moved the "car-rider" lane farther from Falcon Parkway, or Atlanta Highway (Ga. 13).

    Principal Jo Dinnan welcomes the change.

    "Before, our car-rider lane emptied right at Atlanta Highway," and often had drivers lined up on both roads.

     

  • With the New Holland Elementary School scheduled to open on Barn Street by Thanksgiving, the city of Gainesville is engineering the addition of turn lanes and traffic lights where the street butts into Jesse Jewell Parkway, near Guilford Clinics. The contract calls for a construction deadline in early January.

    Major improvements likely will be in place sooner, but not necessarily by the school's start, City Manager Bryan Shuler said.

     

  • The county is still coping with a bus shortage. "To be on the safe side," Armour said that Hall sidelined 22 vehicles in the spring after a wreck in Florida revealed chassis problems with Carpenter Manufacturing Co. buses from two model years.

    The move stretched thin the buses available for extra-curricular activities, such as spring sports and field trips. The replacements have been ordered, and are expected soon after school starts.

    "If we get them within two weeks, we'll be fine," Armour said.

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    		 Photo

    Shawn McCollough