ORANGE Anglican Grammar School hopes an application for additional parking will end the traffic chaos caused by parents queuing to pick up their children of an afternoon.
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The school will submit a development application (DA)to Orange City Council within the next week to build 95 new parking spaces and two new drop-off zones on the school grounds.
It follows complaints that cars waiting to get into the school of an afternoon were creating safety issues for motorists by queuing down Murphy Lane and onto the Mitchell Highway.
One frustrated resident took their concerns to local police, requesting the site be monitored by highway patrol officers.
“We’ve got some neighbours who aren’t very happy,” school principal Ann Brown said.
“We are very concerned about the queuing.
“We’ve got a DA that’s almost ready to go that will hopefully resolve the problem by the beginning of the year.”
Mrs Brown said although additional parking and drop-off zones were planned in the staged development of the school, enrolments had increased at a faster rate than anticipated.
The school has 205 students, of which more than 50 per cent are picked up by parents or carers of an afternoon.
The existing car park has approximately 35 spaces and a loading bay for five cars.
Approximately 10 more cars are able to queue in the school grounds to wait for access to the loading bay.
The number of students at the school will eventually grow to between 700 and 750.
“The council and Roads and Traffic Authority approved the plans, I guess none of us had any definite idea of student growth,” Mrs Brown said.
The school’s proposal will include a new traffic loop on the school grounds to allow cars to queue within the school and not on the road.
However, it won’t address a lack of pedestrian access, which currently prevents the school from allowing students or staff to enter or leave the grounds on foot.
Orange City Council communications and public relations manager Nick Redmond said there were no plans to allow pedestrian access to the school because there was no safe means of crossing either the Mitchell Highway or the Northern Distributor Road.
He said council planners had spent the last four weeks in discussions with the school over the need for more parking.
“It’s a problem, you can’t just have cars stack onto a highway, it’s dangerous,” he said.
Parent Jenny Rands said she supported the proposal to increase the number of spaces.
“The system works, but as the school continues to grow, they’re going to need more,” she said.
lisa.cox@ruralpress.com
