Island parking lot wins design award

ALAMEDA -- Parking lots as a rule aren't very inspiring.

But the stretch of asphalt outside Amelia Earhart elementary school is an award winner, earning honors from the state's engineering industry group, Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC).

Alameda firm Thomson Transportation Engineers Inc. won the group's Small Firm Honor Award for its pro-bono work to expand the lot, and unsnarl a chronic traffic problem parents and school officials say could leave cars idling for hours.

"If one person stopped ... it was all over," said Bob DeLuca, maintenance and facilities director for the school district. "Cars started backing up all over the place ... and that was on a nice day."

Other projects awarded by Sacramento-based CELSOC for engineering excellence include the Bay Area Rapid Transit extension project at San Francisco International; Santana Row, a new three-block shopping center in San Jose; and the new Carquinez Bridge, which won the group's top honor, the Golden State award.

That's pretty impressive company for a parking lot.

"This is so much better," said parent Kirsten Rodgers outside Earhart school Tuesday afternoon, where a band of mini vans and Volvos idled briefly, and then, like a cloud of exhaust, disappeared.

She and parent Maureen Deierling recalled the days when they had to arrive early with a book if they wanted to fetch their kids when the afternoon bell rang.

"If you weren't here by 2:30 p.m., you couldn't pick up your kids at 2:50 p.m.," Deierling said.

Principal Joy Dean said many parents wouldn't wait to reach safe curb space to load and unload their kids, sending students scurrying through parked cars and idling traffic as they made their way to and from campus.

"This is such an improvement," Dean said, looking out her office window Tuesday at the lot, nearly empty by 3 p.m. The school enrolls more than 600 students."That's a lot of students to move within 10 minutes," she said.

Enrollment at the school has nearly doubled since it was built in the late 1970s, and the bulk of students are driven to and from school, contributing to the traffic problem, said Eugenie Thomson. Her engineering firm developed the "island concept" at Oakland International Airport to mitigate traffic congestion there. And a high percentage of parents drive their kids to and from school.

Previous attempts to control traffic focused on the streets around the Bay Farm Island school, DeLuca said.

Thomson reconfigured the parking lot, expanding a narrow, internal roadway to three lanes, and adding 25 parking spaces. She also tripled the curb space for loading and unloading students to 360 feet.

Cars can now pull over to drop-off or pick-up kids without plugging up traffic behind them, said parent Trish Spencer.

More challenging than engineering the project was finding the money to finance it, Thomson said.

Contractors put the project's price tag at $300,000, twice what the school district was prepared to spend.

Instead of submitting a plan to builders for quotes, the typical process, Thomson sat down with contractor Gallagher & Burke to come up with a plan the school could afford.

By using leftover asphalt from an Oakland International Airport project, they were able to cut costs in half. Thomson also convinced AT&T to lay its fiber-optic cable on school property, earning the project$54,000, she said.

The city of Alameda paid for 50 percent of the project, and the school's parent-teacher association contributed the rest.

"It was a huge parent effort," Spencer said. "I don't know if (we) could do it today because of the economy."

Thomson lauded the project for the collaboration it inspired among the city, Alameda neighborhood groups, the school community, even the local fire chief.

"It was really a grass-roots effort," she said. "We all worked together."

The Earhart project rated highly among judges for the benefit it provided to the Bay Farm Island community, and for its cost- effectiveness, said Jennifer Jacobs, a representative for the state engineering group.

"Ms. Thomson is a professional engineer who lives and works in our community and offered her services to make Earhart School ... a more safe location to pick-up and drop-off elementary school children," schools Superintendent Alan Nishino said in a recommendation letter.

Contact Susan McDonough at smcdonough@angnewspapers.com .

c2004 ANG Newspapers. Cannot be used or repurposed without prior written permission.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.