FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Traffic botttlenecks and snarls around many public schools in the United States, causing accidents and creating a hazard for children. University of Arkansas researcher Jim Gattis is working to change that through improvements in school traffic design.

"It is ironic that schools are a place that we are supposed to learn," said Gattis. "But when it comes to designing traffic patterns for schools, we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again that have been made for decades."

Gattis, associate professor of civil engineering, has conducted research on school traffic safety and school bus operations and chaired a national committee on school traffic issues. As a result of this expertise, he was invited to write the section on traffic control for school areas in the Traffic Control Devices Handbook.

Publication of the Handbook in February, 2002, marks the first revision of its content in 20 years. A supplement to the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the Handbook is published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers and is used by traffic engineers and designers.

The issues surrounding school traffic safety are broad and, according to Gattis, "emotionally and politically charged." Although Gattis addresses specific traffic control devices, he stresses that school traffic safety is not just a matter of putting up a few signs and painting some pavement lines. The design of the school building, the layout of the school property, and the selection of the tract itself can also impact safety for both drivers and pedestrians.

School traffic safety is complicated by extreme peak volumes of traffic and a client population — school children — with limited abilities to detect, judge and respond to traffic situations. In addition, school traffic control is complicated by the number of groups involved in school traffic concerns and decisions from school boards and local police to traffic engineers and parent organizations.

Parents, concerned about the safety of their children, often elect to transport them to and from school in cars and watch until they enter the building. However, many school traffic designs do not account for peak volumes or parental concerns and preferences. As a result, parents may double park, triple park or clog traffic on major arterial streets.

"Because traffic control devices such as signs are relatively inexpensive and can be installed in a relatively short time, they may be more attractive to a council or board for addressing a particular concern, even where a traffic control device doesn’t really solve the problem," Gattis explained. "Local agencies can install a sign in response to an emotionally charged traffic concern, adopting the mindset that if the complaints have gone away, then the problem has been solved. But solving the political problem doesn’t mean that the school traffic safety problem has been really solved. School traffic problems can’t always be solved by traffic control devices because some problems they are caused by poor design and implementation decisions."

Since traffic control devices are only one part of the issue, Gattis’ Handbook section also includes an explanation of how school design affects traffic safety. In addition to outlining methods for conducting needs-assessment studies, he gives objective criteria for making design decisions, points out potential problems and provides information on other resources.

Because most school traffic issues are dealt with at the local level, traffic safety problems are compounded by an absence of data. Gattis suggests that this could be addressed by implementing a national structure for systematically reporting of local traffic engineering actions.

"There is seldom a means to conduct a systematic study of the outcomes of local actions taken and to convey the findings to other traffic engineers across the country," he explained. "As a result, traffic professionals all too often have to reinvent the wheel in each locality."