‘We’re not sure how the city planned this’: Residents petition for changes around Kelowna school

A petition has been launched calling on the City of Kelowna to do something about parking and traffic flow problems around Kelowna’s newest school.

“We’re not sure how the city planned this expecting all these cars to pick up their kids every day after school,” area resident Mary Ellen Medena told Global News.

Medena lives on Frost Road across from Canyon Falls Middle School in the city’s Upper Mission area.

She blames the city for poor planning, which she said has caused a lot of congestion, illegal parking and safety issues around the school, especially around pick-up time.

Frost Road, in front of the school, is narrow, and parking is only allowed on one side of the street.

According to residents, pick-up time is chaotic for both area residents and the parents arriving to pick up their children from school.

“Parents that are upset about what the city has done with the narrow roads and just popping a school down here with no proper parking or transit flow,” Medena said.

Last week, the city changed parking rules and switched legal parking from the residential side to the school side, which means residents can no longer park in front of their own homes, but on the other side of the road.

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“They took the parking away, which now has us on the other side of the street,”  Medena said.

Not only is that upsetting to residents, but the decision, to switch parking sides has created another safety concern because, with so many cars in the area at pick-up time, many parents are still parking illegally on the residential side as well.

“We still have parents parking in front of our homes, which then actually made it more dangerous because kids were crossing the street to get into their parents’ cars, waiting in front of our homes,” Medena added.

Residents have launched a petition and plan on handing it over to the city council to convince councillors to revert back to allowing residents to park in front of their homes.

The petition also asks the city to provide after school parking options elsewhere and consider installing a warning light at the corner of Frost and Steele Roads to allow children to cross the busy and congested road in a safer manner.

Global News has reached out to the City of Kelowna but has not yet heard back.