A half-dozen Ocean Avenue Elementary School students, accompanied by their parents with coffee mugs and dog leashes in hand, walked down Edwards Street last Thursday morning to wait for the school bus beside the commuter traffic on Congress Street.

Not among them was 8-year-old Zeke Podolsky. His father decided that driving his third-grader to school was the only option after learning the bus stop had been moved from the corner of a quiet side street to the busy corridor.

Children and their parents, from left, Nicole Gordon, Margaret Carignan and Deb Breiting, await the bus at Edwards and Congress streets. Carignan said she depends on the bus stops being safe because she has to get to work and can’t drive her child to school.

Children board their bus at Edwards and Congress streets. A Portland school official says the district is monitoring the new bus stops and it’s open to changes if necessary. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

“It’s just a disaster waiting to happen,” Michael Podolsky said.

Parents who were at the stop weren’t pleased either, and others with children assigned to wait on Auburn Street and Brighton Avenue also have concerns about the safety of the new consolidated bus routes. For now, the Portland school district has no plans to make changes.

“The bus stops are along sidewalks, which have plenty of room,” said Craig Worth, the district’s deputy chief operations officer. “At this point, we plan to keep them as is.”

Worth said he didn’t know how many complaints the school district has received from parents concerned about bus stop safety.

If no changes are made, Jim Streeter or his wife will start driving their two kids to Lyseth Elementary School. That may leave their stop on the corner of Auburn Street and Washington Avenue Extension without any student bus riders.

Streeter’s kindergartener hasn’t started school yet, so his first-grader was the only one at the bus stop Thursday.

After trying out the new stop on the first day of school Wednesday, Streeter said, all the other parents decided to go to other stops or drive their kids themselves.

“There’s just got to be another way,” he said.

SIDE EFFECT OF FEWER BUS RUNS

The school district decided to consolidate bus routes this year in conjunction with a change in school start times and a new requirement that high school students use city buses, freeing up more of the fleet.

Last year, buses made as many as three trips to each school in order to pick up and drop off all the students, some of whom wouldn’t get home until an hour and a half after school ended, Worth said.

With more buses available and two elementary start times, the idea this year was to get all students from each school on and off in one trip, with buses making one run for the schools that start earlier, then another for the later schools.

But with just 20 minutes between start times, the trips have to be quick. That’s why the routes were relocated to main streets, rather than stopping on side streets like they used to do. However, some of the main streets are heavily traveled, some with more than 10,000 cars a day.

That means the bus coming down Congress Street halts commuter traffic at the corner of nearly every side street in Libbytown during the morning rush hour.

Nicole Gordon, whose fifth-grader, Charlie, catches the school bus at the corner of Edwards Street at 7:40 a.m., said she saw two cars drive right past the stop sign on the school bus Wednesday.

Deb Breiting, whose two girls also use the stop, said she worries about cars cutting through Edwards Street to get from Congress to Brighton. She’s even seen them cut through the parking lot of Eddie’s Nails, where the kids have been waiting.

Lauren Dietlin has taught her third-grader, Everett, not to walk into the street, but you never know what kids might do, she said.

“You don’t want to stand at the bus stop and hold your kids’ hands like they’re in chains,” Dietlin said.

But that might be the only option for some parents.

“I have to get to work. I can’t drive my kids to school,” said Margaret Carignan, who was waiting Thursday with her 8-year-old son, Scott.

MORE SAFETY CONCERNS IN WINTER

Parents say they’d happily have their children ride the bus for a longer period of time if it meant safer stops. And they’re quick to note that their concerns have nothing to do with wanting the stops to be closer to their houses. They said they’re concerned only with safety, and they want to meet with the district soon to air their concerns.

The parents say they’ll have even more concerns in the winter, when snow from plows is likely to pile up on sidewalks that don’t get cleared right away.

Streeter said the district has promised to remove snow from the stop, but he doesn’t believe it.

Worth said the district will continue to monitor the situation and is not opposed to making changes if necessary, but he said right now, it’s just too early to tell.

“As winter conditions start, we may have to modify things,” he said.

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