Pinal Today

The City of Maricopa recently announced that it is working with local schools to reduce traffic congestion during school drop-off and pickup hours.

The City is focusing on the southern end of Porter Road, which is home to seven schools, a recent release on inMaricopa.com said. During school student drop-off and pickup times, the area becomes congested with cars.

Rodolfo Lopez, Development Services Department director, recently gave a presentation to the City Council regarding how to approach traffic issues, the release said. Possible solutions included a campaign to promote walking and biking to school, expanding the school bus program, hiring off-duty police officers for afternoon traffic control and staggering the schools’ release times.

City manager Rick Horst noted that any plan's success would require parent cooperation. 

“In addition to these plans, even if they are executed well, we have parents who want to cheat the system,” he said in the release. “They’ll park in the neighborhood and tell their kid to run across the street and meet me down by the corner of this street and I don’t think they fully understand what they are asking their children to do.

“It’s ultimately the responsibility of the parents to get their children to and from school safely. The city and the schools can do their parts, but after that there’s not much we can do. So, it’s really a three-pronged effort – the schools, the city and the parents.”

Council member Rich Vitiello noted that it will mostly fall on the City to address these issues. 

“My issue is obviously with the schools actually doing what we say they’re going to have to do,” Vitiello said in the release. “Which means we are going to have to put officers out there to enforce this. We already went through that there’s not enough officers to do all this schooling. We have to hold schools accountable. Without holding them accountable, we can’t do it all.”

But all the responsibility does not lie with the schools, the council member admitted.

“Some of these parents, I know I’m sticking my neck out, just don’t care,” Vitiello said in the release. “They care about themselves. But guess what, we have to care about everybody. We have to care about those kids on bicycles, skateboards, scooters. I don’t want to see anybody get killed.”