Cupertino students, parents call for more safety measures at busy high school intersection

San Jose Mercury News - 3/7/2024

Road safety advocates say additional crosswalk precautions are needed at a busy high school intersection to keep students out of harm’s way. Their concerns persist even after the city of Cupertino installed a crossing guard at the beginning of the school year to keep foot and vehicle traffic flowing smoothly.

Located near the southwestern edge of the school, the Finch Avenue and Calle de Barcelona three-way junction is packed with Cupertino High School students during the early mornings and late afternoons. With no stop signs on the two-way avenue, pedestrians must keep an eye out for oncoming cars or bikes. The result: an almost free-for-all crossing situation.

“All the students would wait at the edge of the crosswalk, look left and right, then occasionally you would have one car that randomly stops,” said Henry Widjaja, a Cupertino senior who frequently crosses the intersection to get to school. “You would have to guess, ‘OK, are they letting me go? Should I go or not go?’ Then you look to the left and by chance you have a car coming at you that did not stop.”

Following months of advocacy efforts in 2023 from Widjaja, Cupertino students and parents to create an all-way stop, the city added a crossing guard in August to monitor rush-hour traffic, which is 7:50 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. every school day, 3:45 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 2:55 p.m. to 3:40 p.m. on the remaining days.

Widjaja said the addition of the guard has made crossings safer, but crowds of students who leave campus during lunch or anytime outside of those hours are still at risk.

“During lunch, all the cars can pass by at 30 to 40 miles an hour, which they are not supposed to, but they do it anyway,” he said. “That makes it exponentially more dangerous.”

Almost half of the student population in Cupertino commutes by some method other than a family car, including walking, carpooling and biking. Cupertino High boasts the highest citywide biking rate at 19%, according to Fall 2023 travel data from Cupertino Safe Routes to School, a program between city staff and community partners to create safer commuting environments for students and families.

In the past, the city has taken measures to make the junction more visible, including widening the sidewalks and adding wayfinding signage and striping along the avenue. However, Jennifer Shearin, a parent of three Cupertino alumni and advocate for these safety efforts, said installing signs is the best way to get cars to stop for pedestrians and avoid accidents.

Two students were hit by a car at the intersection last year, and there was another incident less than a hundred feet away, according to Walk Bike Cupertino, a local organization that advocates for safe and easy walking and biking routes in the city. A petition for a three-way stop also circulated the community in spring of 2023 and accumulated more than 225 signatures.

Similarly designed Cupertino junctions have more safety measures in place, the organization says. For instance, a half-mile road stretches along Kennedy Middle School and behind Monta Vista High School and is a hub for foot and vehicle traffic. The road is a similar length as Finch Ave, but has four speed tables and one intersection with three-way stop signs.

“I can’t see where many parents would feel completely safe with the intersection as it currently is without stop signs,” Shearin said. “Something needs to be done to improve the safety so we don’t have further accidents.”

If community members want to continue to push for an all-way stop, Steven Puccinelli, assistant principal for Cupertino High, said school staff would work with the city again to see if it could happen.

“We don’t have any school reasons to be opposed to a stop sign,” he said. “Would it help with the safety means that we are seeing? We have to do a little more study and work on it.”

For instance, staff noticed that during peak hours, cars were already moving slowly through the intersection to allow crowds to pass. A large number of bicyclists traveling along Calle de Barcelona and crossing Finch were disregarding an existing stop sign on Barcelona and going right through the intersection. If a stop sign was installed, Stillman said, drivers during less-busy hours might not take it seriously and get into the habit of coming to a rolling stop or speeding through the rest of the avenue.

All of these factors and more led him to recommend installing a crossing guard for the 2023-2024 school year instead.

“We found the crossing guard has been effective,” he said, “in controlling the traffic during the before- and after-school time.”