Residents Petition Bethesda for School Traffic Signal Reimbursement

Almost 300 residents have signed an online petition to ask Bethesda Health Group to kick in funds for a traffic light that has gone up at the entrance of  and .

The signal, , was part of a four-year effort to make the schools’ intersection safer for its approximately 160 employees and 1,124 students.

Oakville residents Donna Seidel and Rosemary Nagy spearheaded the endeavor after they had success in petitioning for a full-time signal in front of Point Elementary in 2008.

Unlike the signal at Oakville Middle School, the Point signal was already in place and just needed to operate throughout the day, rather than at school start and end times. 

“This was going to be a whole different project, but our kids are going to be there in two years,” Seidel said. They needed to gain approval and construct an entire new traffic light on Telegraph Road.

A Fight for the Build

In 2007, former Wohlwend principal Christina Warner wrote a letter to Sen. Harry Kennedy asking him to advocate for a signal on the 5900 block of Telegraph Road, where the two schools lie.

“During the past 20 years, and specifically the last five years, businesses and housing developments have drastically increased. During the morning hours when buses, staff and parents are arriving to the schools, entering the campus is extremely dangerous,” she wrote.

When Seidel and Nagy took over the project, their first step was to ask the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) to create a crash study.

According to their study, only two crashes could have been prevented by a signal between 2002 and 2006. For them to install a light, at least five crashes per year must occur at the location.

Statistics from the St. Louis County Police and Mehlville Fire Protection District (MFPD) proved different. In 2009 alone, police reported two accidents on Telegraph between Gebhardt and Erb roads. They have also issued 138 citations between January and October 2009.

Officer Dan Schroeder with the Fourth Precinct said officers sat in the area by the schools due to a high volume of vehicles.

The MFPD responded to 22 EMS calls in the area between 2002 and October of 2009, with 13 of those calls between 2002 and 2006.

“Their numbers were way different from what MoDOT had reported,” Seidel said. “We found a flaw in their data system. They didn’t gather the information correctly and they didn’t manipulate their information correctly.”

This started a slew of letter-writing campaigns and petitions to inform residents about the need of a signal, Seidel said. They distributed information to parents through PTO organizations.

“You’re dealing with lives on a five-lane highway,” she said. “We showed them (MoDOT) accident photos from several instances.”

In March of 2010, Seidel and Nagy went to the school board with their mission. The board granted then-Superintendent Terry Noble permission to enter into negotiations with MoDOT.

MoDOT said the district would have to pay for the signal, since its crash requirements were not fulfilled. They said the signal would also have to be built at a south entrance of the schools, due to a regulation that said school signals had to be a minimum of 1,000 feet from an existing traffic light.

The entrance was only 860 feet south of the signal at Black Forest Drive. The estimated cost to construct a second driveway for the schools and the signal was $580,000.

“Within the cost was the expense of completing an engineering study, relocating our utilities, relocating our driveway, and construction of a storm water basin,” Noble said in an email to Patch. “This cost included aligning our driveway with the southern driveway at Bethesda (which required all the movement of utilities, driveway and a storm water basin). Once it was determined the signal could be aligned with Bethesda's northern driveway (and our current driveway), the cost dropped considerably."

Noble credits the decreased cost estimates to the efforts of Seidel and Nagy. In Feb. 2010, MoDOT said they would share costs of the signal.

“MoDOT can pay for half of the construction of the school signal with the school responsible for the design, right of way, utilities and half the construction. We are prepared to move forward with that plan if you desire,” wrote MoDOT Chief Engineer Kevin Keith in a letter to the district. 

The district approved a payment of $80,000 for the signal.

“Telegraph is an extremely busy highway. There are two campuses that use the same driveway. A tremendous amount of traffic enters and leaves this location daily. It was easy to understand the signal was a matter of safety,” Noble said.

Bethesda Challenges the Signal

With an $80,000 charge to the school district, Seidel went to Bethesda in hopes of splitting the cost.

Bethesda is located across the street from the schools and also uses the four-way signal.

The online petition Seidel created sends an email to Bethesda executives every time someone signs. As of Sunday, the petition had 273 signatures from parents and residents in the district asking the non-profit company to contribute $40,000. 

Noble said he made numerous attempts to get in touch with Bethesda for support before a contract was negotiated with MoDOT.

“A secretary called me after the contract was signed to say their CEO would be calling me in a few days. This was after I made numerous attempts to get in touch with him. I never received the phone call,” he said.

The only contact Noble received was an email in January from Larry Hickman, Corporate VP of Administrative Services for Bethesda.

In the email, Hickman states:

“We are not supportive of a stoplight at the proposed location, and the result of a light at this location will be a prohibitively expensive redesign of our campus to accommodate the issues introduced by this light.”

“Given the current economic environment we are all experiencing, and as a not-for-profit senior care company, we must be good stewards of our limited resources while attending to the needs of our residents.”

But Seidel is not convinced. She still feels slighted that the district had to pay for half of the project when Bethesda is also using the signal.

“We’re just kind of frustrated,” she said. “We’ve got people like our parents that are going out and clipping soup cans so we can get a dime so we can buy a Smartboard and they have a and can’t chip in for the signal.

We never wanted it to be us versus them, but we still have to protect and take care of our own.”

Editor's Note: Attempts to contact Bethesda were unsuccessful.