In this short video, Katie Goodman, mother of a pre-schooler at Quaker Lane Cooperative Nursery School, calls on West Hartford leaders to install more raised crosswalks to meet Vision Zero goals and calm traffic around schools.
“A lot of the parents and I have been concerned for a long time about the cars flying by on Maplewood,” the entrance to Quaker Lane Cooperative Nursery School, explains Goodman. “When I’m trying to get my kid out to drop them off at preschool in the morning, they go by so fast, it’s really scary.”
“I’ve seen cars here with a speed gun going 36 miles per hour, which is way too fast,” says Goodman. “They don’t seem to have any idea that this is a school area and there’s preschool kids getting dropped off here.”
“We really want the Town of West Hartford to put more of those raised crosswalks in,” suggests Goodman. “The one by Morley School [on Fern Street] seems like it’s working really well. I can tell that it slows traffic down.” In fact, Goodman points out that West Hartford’s Vision Zero Annual Report “has a raised crosswalk on its cover page. But there’s only 3 [raised crosswalks] in town. We really want more of those, especially at every school and every preschool.”
“I know this issue is really important to all of the parents here at Quaker Lane, and to all of the parents of school-age children in town,” Goodman concludes. “We’re voters [and] this issue matters a lot to us. We’re going to keep it in mind because there’s nothing more important than the safety of our kids and all of the kids in town.”