City staff and commissioners outline school traffic‑calming toolkit, delay acknowledged

City transportation staff and members of the Transportation Commission spent the bulk of the Jan. 15 meeting discussing coordination with Ann Arbor Public Schools on signage, capital projects and a new school traffic‑calming toolkit that City Council directed staff to produce.

The discussion centered on three topics: ongoing coordination with school staff and Safe Routes to School groups on near‑term signage and operational fixes; coordination on school capital projects that overlap city right of way (for example, Nixon Road and Clague Middle School); and the delayed school traffic‑calming toolkit (Council resolution R‑23330) that staff had been instructed to deliver by Dec. 31, 2024.

Why this matters: Commissioners framed the conversation around safety for students arriving on foot, by bike and by bus, and the city’s limited control over decisions on school property. Commissioners and staff also discussed how funding structures and project timelines affect whether safety measures come as near‑term signage fixes or longer capital changes tied to resurfacing or reconstruction projects.

Cyrus Nihidi, one of the city’s transportation engineers, told the commission that city staff regularly meet with Ann Arbor Public Schools staff, school principals and Safe Routes to School groups to identify field issues and assign responsibility for fixes. “Sometimes this can come out of a Safe Routes to School meeting in the field,” Nihidi said. “Sometimes it is as simple as a request from a school to say, we’d like to establish no…