SAN ANTONIO – IDEA Judson has grown from 460 students to 770 in its second year, meaning a couple hundred more cars added to the pickup line after school and more traffic issues.
“We did not know the traffic issues would increase the way they have with these last two classes that they added,” said Connie Marszalek, president of the Feather Ridge Neighborhood Association.
Marszalek said traffic studies presented by IDEA members before the school was built showed no additional traffic in the subdivision, but a second entrance on Feather Ridge Drive was added at the request of the city. That street is the lone entrance into a subdivision of 200 homes.
The street looked like a parking lot during pickup Thursday afternoon, with lines of parked cars on both sides and overflow parking on the side streets.
“I get here about 3:45 and it's a little after 4, so it's about 20-25 minutes of wait time before I can pick up my daughter,” said Benjamin Fernandez, who chose to park and walk to pick up his daughter instead of waiting in a slow-moving line of cars.
“There's been an awful lot of animosity between the parents and some of the residents because of the inability to get into the neighborhood or get out of the neighborhood,” Marszalek said.
A staff member for District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry said total pickup time for all students had dropped from over an hour on Monday to about 30 minutes on Friday, according to the school principal.
The same staff member plans to monitor the traffic during morning drop-off and afternoon pickup to see which solutions may exist for everyone involved. The school had off-duty deputies out this week directing afternoon traffic.
“The school cannot afford to pay police officers, constables or anybody else to sit there and watch traffic,” Marszalek said.
“There's a little frustration. It was almost like this last year as well, but as the days went by it got a little more controlled,” Fernandez said.
