Flashing beacons to make walking to school safer at two Bakersfield campuses

Parents and their children who attend two Bakersfield public schools can rest a bit easier tonight with the approval by the city to install safety beacons around their campuses’ crosswalks.

The City Council on Wednesday approved a nearly $300,000 installation of yellow flashing beacons near both Norris Middle School in the Norris School District and Raffaello Palla Elementary School in the Greenfield Union School District.

“We’ve always had concerns with traffic around our schools and having all the things in place like crossing guards and other necessary staff,” Norris School District Superintendent Cy Silver said.

In recent years, Silver said, the community around Norris Middle has grown to a sizable suburbia. There’s now an Amazon warehouse, an outgrowth of outdoor strip malls and several more neighborhoods, all equating to a lot more traffic.

“The area was rural for a long period of time,” Silver said. “But it’s developing. So we have more housing tracts that have been added and that creates more traffic, be it commercial shopping centers and cars coming in and out.”

This increase in traffic has spilled onto busy Calloway Drive, the main thoroughfare which fronts the school.

“Sometimes the speeds going by are a little disconcerting,” Silver said. “Our community can only benefit from safer pathways for our kids going to school.”

The beacons are to be purchased and installed at no cost to the city. Instead, they are funded mostly by the Highway Safety Improvement Program, federal aid that was awarded at the March 8 council meeting. Additional costs will be covered by the Utility Surcharge Fund as well as

American Rescue Plan Act funds.

According to city spokesman Joe Conroy, the city applied for the HSIP grant in 2018, which made the funds available in the 20192020 fiscal year. It was then added to the city’s capital improvement program list

for future fixes.

“For that grant cycle, these were the only schools that were included in the grant application,” Conroy said. “Typically, pedestrian beacons are initially considered based on the request of the schools or residents.”

For schools interested in receiving safety lights, fret not: The city has already applied for funding to install more pedestrian flashing beacons at other schools.

But for the crosswalks on Calloway and Manhattan drives in northwest Bakersfield, and at the intersection of Monitor Street and Kyner Avenue in south Bakersfield, construction will start within the next few months. The crosswalks are expected to be flashing bright before the start of the school year next fall.