BERKELEY – There are electric signs alerting drivers of a new traffic pattern near the intersection at Central Regional High School’s main entrance. This was done to help buses leaving the campus, officials said.
Superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides put out a note to the public letting people know about the changes.
There is a traffic light including a green turn arrow for left hand turns coming out of the school lot and a delayed green for oncoming traffic from Grand Central Parkway, he said. In addition, there still exists a “no turn on red” during the school year during school hours.
The only changes involve the timing of the lights, said county engineer John Ernst. No other work was done to the intersection.
He said the work was being done as a response to a complaint about buses having a hard time making left turns out of the high school.
On one recent school day, a flood of vehicles could be seen leaving the campus around 2 p.m. Less of them went left, compared to straight or right. Down the left is a very rural area of town where one can sometimes hear a rooster crowing in the morning. When a bus did go through, it had more time to navigate that left turn because of the delayed green. What didn’t help were students walking slowly through the intersection.
The roads have several different names. The high school is on Forest Hills Parkway, although that road changes to Pinewald-Keswick Road to the west and Veterans Boulevard to the east. But it’s also Route 618. The road leading out of Beachwood is Grand Central Parkway, or Route 621. Even though these are both county routes, no one really refers to them by their number.
Since they are county roads, though, the county had to do the work. Ernst said there weren’t any additional costs to the project; it was included as part of regular maintenance.
The changes went into effect on April 13, just before the school’s spring break.
The 7-Eleven that opened in 2019 concerned neighbors who anticipated a lot more traffic going to the location, and a lot of cars going into and out of an already busy road.
Ernst said the convenience store, which shares that intersection, had nothing to do with the need for this project.
