Road Warrior

The in basket: Roger Hoskins and Jack Gaudette, both South Kitsapers, wonder about the new school zone established on recently widened Sedgwick Road, where there is no school, but where many children use the crosswalk getting to and from Hidden Valley Elementary a ways down Converse Avenue.

It’s one of those in effect when a light attached to the school zone sign is flashing. 

Dave Dahlke, also of SK, has the same question about that kind of school zone generally

It’s “very nice and safe for the children.” Roger said of the Sedgwick zone, but it’s unclear where it ends.

“While traveling 20 mph in the eastbound lane of Sedgwick I was waiting for an ‘end school zone’ sign to appear when I realized that I had traveled a considerable distance without finding the sign,” Roger said. “Another clue that I had either missed it or it did not exist was the large school bus glued to my bumper. I decided to speed up near Brasch.

“I have traveled that several more times and can only guess that either the 35 mph sign signifies the end of the zone or someone inadvertently forgot to install the sign,” he said. 

Jack said essentially the same thing.

Dave said, “I am wondering why there is no sign stating ‘End of School Zone’. Unless I am mistaken I don’t believe that coming upon a speed limit sign is considered the end of a school zone. Is there a law that covers this situation?”

The out basket: Roger’s guess is correct, says Brenden Clarke, project manager for state highways here. 

“Our standards require the use of an “End School Zone” OR a speed limit sign at the end of a school zone.” he said.   “On Sedgwick, we have speed limit signs at the end of the school zone that designate the location where motorists can resume speed.”

That doesn’t seem to be the usual means of marking the end of school zones around here, but Kitsap County’s traffic engineer Jeff Shea agrees. 

It’s not a law, per se, but the Manual of Uniform Traffic 

Control Devices, the federally developed guidebook to which the state, county and cities normally comply, says either a speed limit sign or “End of School Zone” sign can be used, Jeff said.

“We have most of our school zones marked with End School Zone signs and the speed limit sign either on the sign or near it.”  

Tags: school zone, Sedgwick

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 1:01 pm by travis baker and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.