City of Joshua officials are continuing to monitor traffic patterns on Plum Creek Drive to determine the future need of no parking signs opposite Plum Creek Elementary School.
Some parents and grandparents of Plum Creek students have complained because the signs were placed on the side of the street nearest the school, forcing them to drop off kids on the other side. Those children must cross the street to get to school.
Plum Creek Drive, which parallels Stadium Drive and empties onto Texas 174, is heavily traveled during early morning and late afternoon hours.
“It’s all in the interest of safety,” said Mike Peacock, the city’s director of operations. “It’s probably not perfect, and we will continue to evaluate.”
Peacock said the signs were placed on Plum Creek Drive in part because of recent construction of the new Joshua football Stadium on Stadium Drive and in part because of pee wee football fans who park on Plum Creek Drive to watch pee wee football practices and games.
“The signs were put there to solve a couple of issues,” Peacock said. “One of the final things during construction at the new stadium was to route all the water drainage pipes under Stadium Drive. That shut down Stadium Drive in two places, and we were going to have to reroute traffic to Highway 174. The other issue was that traffic flow increased during pee wee football practices and games. During late afternoon and early evening, both sides of the street were jam-packed.
“So, [Plum Creek Drive] was a traffic hazard. We decided to contact the pee wee football association to tell them we were going to put up signs on a temporary basis to make sure we had a lane of traffic open on that street. We have to be able to get fire trucks and other emergency vehicles in there. Also, there’s a housing development west of Plum Creek. Those people had no other way out when we shut down Stadium Drive.
“The pee wee football people agreed to notify their members that the parking lot across the street was available to them. The target was not so much school traffic as pee wee football traffic.”
Peacock said he’s aware of the contention that placement of the signs forces children to cross the street to go to school.
“There’s a turnaround that parents sometimes don’t choose to use,” Peacock said. “They can drive through the turnaround, stop and let kids off. They just can’t park there and leave vehicles unattended. We’re considering putting up signs that have a time limit for parking after 4 p.m. The main problem is in late afternoon and early evening.
“We’re continually monitoring the situation in the afternoons to see what the best fix is. It may be to take the signs down altogether, but we won’t be able to do that until construction on the stadium is done. That road was dug up for a couple of weeks and will be again.”
Johnson County
Parents, city at odds over signs at elementary school
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