School Traffic

Dear parents

We have heard, and share, your frustration each day crawling up College Lane towards the school for drop off and pick-ups. We are very fortunate to have the efficient assistance of Mr Mzi Nxele, the traffic warden who is employed by the Sunninghill Ratepayers Community, directing the traffic from Maxwell Drive into and out of College Lane. However as hard as Mr Nxele works at that intersection, it does not alleviate the traffic congestion if we don’t play our part when driving into and out of the College parking areas.

There are traffic factors beyond our control which we would like to bring to your attention in an effort to appeal to everyone to try help with these where they can, including:

• An increase in the total number of students enrolled at the College this year
• Loss of the one-lane for Covid-19 controls. We have only lost 5 parking bays to this area, but because this lane is wider and allowed traffic to flow better during peak times, it has a significant impact on traffic flow, as we all well know.
• Most morning sport has not yet resumed, which means a significant number of students who would previously have been at school early for morning training sessions are no longer coming early which allowed for staggered drop off times.
• Fewer students are staying after school for co-curricular sport and/or cultural activities than in previous years, more than likely as a result of Covid-19 concerns, which then increases the number of cars fetching students straight after school.  
• General traffic patterns have changed and moved a little later as a result of many more people working from home and thus not necessarily needing to depart home as early as before to get to their workplaces.

How can YOU help:

• Did you know that students can be dropped off at school from as early as 06:00 am? Covid screening is then conducted by our security staff, and there are a number of classrooms available for use for early arrivers.
• Drivers can remain focused, particularly when entering and leaving the parking lot to avoid unnecessary delays.
• Drivers can commit to moving through the school gate as smoothly as possible. PLEASE NOTE that if the drop off lanes on the left area are full, traffic should turn into the other area of the parking lot and NOT wait, blocking the gate entry for the hundred cars behind you. This way there will be far less to no traffic build-up at the gate. It is perfectly safe, and more considerate to other drivers, to park and let your children walk to the Covid-19 screening area, rather than waiting to drop them at the gazebos.
• Another action that can be taken is to ensure your children have their masks on before you stop, and are ready to leave the vehicle on arrival, particularly if you are be using the drop off lanes. If the students are not ready, please proceed to a parking space rather than blocking the drop off lanes for an unnecessary length of time.
• Likewise, if your children use drivers/Ubers for transport, please convey this message to them and the drivers, so that all vehicles either find a legitimate space in the drop off lanes (only for those planning a rapid entry/exit) or alternatively, proceed to a legitimate parking space.
• When departing the school parking area in the afternoons, please be aware of the vehicles who are also trying to exit from the bottom of the parking as often so many cars are feeding in from the top that those at the bottom are left waiting for unnecessarily long periods of time. If we could treat this as a ‘taking turns’ arrangement there will be less of a back-up at the bottom of the parking lot, and once again, assist with better flow of traffic.

We all have some power to influence the flow of traffic to some extent, so it would be so greatly appreciated if we could all commit to playing our part using some of the suggestions above. For those who already are employing considerate and responsible traffic behaviour each day, we thank you!

Let’s tackle this together and do our part to make these times less frustrating and time-consuming.

Thanks so much!