As the 2023-2024 school year begins, concern about the pick-up line at St. Luke’s is once again at a high. For years, this line has sparked controversy among students, faculty, parents, and surrounding residents due to traffic congestion. Some students believe that this issue is unsolvable, though members of the administration like Julia Gabriele, St. Luke’s Associate Head of School and Chief Financial Officer, have been working for years to improve the efficiency of the line and solve this problem. As of now, there are short and long-term solutions.
St. Luke’s Campus Supervision Officer Rodney Vining described the current status of the pick-up line with enthusiasm.
“This year it seems to be better than last year. We have a system in place where it’s working out a little better,” said Vining.
The new license plate reader is part of this system.
“It’s a license plate reader so a child can actually see if their parents are here or not. It’s by a camera and the LDR reader reads the plate,” Vining said.
This reader connects to a screen in the St. Luke’s lobby that displays the student’s name once their car pulls in to indicate that their parent has arrived. Once a student sees their name, they can walk to their car and leave campus. This system is to improve efficiency and relieve traffic congestion.
Although Vining believes that the new system is working, members of the St. Luke’s community seem to think that more needs to be done.
“As a senior in the AC lot, I feel that being blocked in every day at 4 p.m. is extremely inconvenient,” Calum Regan ‘24 said. “I spoke to my advisor about it, and we couldn’t find a solution.”
This issue also impacts parents. Jenny Lukens, a parent of two students and a member of the St. Luke’s community for six years feels that the congestion has not improved.
“I now have realized that I need to carve out pretty much an hour and 15 minutes (for school pickup) when I only live 20 minutes from school,” Lukens said. “It is very hard to make it to other activities outside of school when it takes so long to pick up my kids.”
Although, parents may be contributing to the problem. Many believe that arriving early to pick up their children will speed up the process when it may be slowing it down. Gabriele believes that when parents arrive on campus early, it worsens congestion.
“The biggest problem we have are parents who come early for pick up because if you come early and you park along the circle, then the traffic goes all the way out to North Wilton and nobody can come in,” Gabriele said. “If people arrive right when kids get out, theoretically, kids would get in the car, and it would just keep moving.”
Gabriele has attempted to educate parents to arrive on campus when students are dismissed, but parents continue to arrive early.
The increase in the St. Luke’s student population over recent years has also contributed to this issue.
According to the St. Luke’s Website, on the “Community Status” page, “One hundred and thirty-three new students joined St. Luke’s this year, bringing our total enrollment to 595 — matching last year’s historic high.” In fact, that number may be outdated as the website states elsewhere that the current enrollment is at 603 students.
An increased population means more children are picked up at the end of the day, creating more traffic.
As long as parents arrive early and the school continues to grow in population, the issue will persist. Although, there is a plan for the future that may eliminate traffic congestion.
On Tuesday, June 6, Gabriele and the traffic crew experimented with a new pick-up arrangement to help alleviate traffic congestion. During pick-up, cars lined up in a corral arrangement in the senior lots, as seniors had already graduated.
“And so we did test it and it did work….It was great. Nobody waited,” Gabriele said. “It got all of the cars off of North Wilton Road and onto our campus, which is safer, and it made it so that once kids got out, we could then start a line and keep people moving.”
With this success in mind, Gabriele, Board Chair Christopher Rosow, and a team including Board Building & Grounds trustee chair Andy Hobson, SMRT Architects, and traffic engineering firm AKRF have developed a plan for the future. This plan involves raising the Watson Turf Field, building a parking garage underneath, and repurposing an existing parking lot into a drop-off and pick-up corral. This new plan would make the corral system possible with the ability to park under the field and use the extra space.
Head of the School, Dr. Mary Halpin Carter, sent an email on Oct. 3, announcing the Campus Enhancement Plan. Halpin wrote, “We plan to submit applications to the Town of New Canaan later this month.”
If approved by the Town of New Canaan, this plan could fix the pick-up line and many other problems at St. Luke’s. With access to a parking garage underneath the field, limited parking would no longer be a reality. During construction, there are also plans to renovate the Watson Turf Field. In recent years, potholes that have populated the field have caused game delays and cancellations.
Parents learned more about the timeline of this proposal during the State of the School on Oct. 12.
Until this plan is approved, Gabriele wants to hear students’ ideas on relieving traffic congestion.
“I really believe that adults, we have one perspective and one way to solve this problem which isn’t necessarily the right way,” Gabriele said. “I think students are very creative, they have new ways of looking at things and they don’t have preconceived notions. I think students can be a huge part of the solution.”
