Also: Shoreline middle schools will have new early-morning signals cutting the dark

Students and their families at Shoreline middle schools will have a bit of relief in increasingly-dark early-morning walks to school after this year’s fall break.

Starting Dec. 1, flashing school zone signs near Einstein and Kellogg middle schools will have new patterns for students arriving in time for the schools’ early-morning “zero period” hours. Flashing yellow lights will now warn drivers to slow down around the schools from 7:15 to 7:35 a.m. School zone lights will continue to flash at their usual times, including the standard 8:10 a.m. activation on regular school days.

The early-morning flashing lights will hopefully warn drivers of students in crosswalks as the sun rises later and the days get shorter. By the end of December, sunrise isn’t expected until nearly 8 a.m., per the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

The new signal times come as a collaboration between Shoreline School District and the City of Shoreline, which operates and programs the signals. The school district reached out to the city in August this year, proposing a change to signalization at Kellogg Middle School, off of 25th Avenue Northeast.

The change took a few months to implement due somewhat to logistical challenges: back-and-forth conversations between the city and the school district to iron out details, then the city had to test its signals to make sure they could handle additional programming, including around Einstein Middle School. “They have just as much exposure there,” said city traffic engineer Kendra Dedinsky. “Third Avenue Northwest is also high volume, higher even than Kellogg.” 

Though the pattern change has been in the works for months, the request was highlighted by a community member during the Nov. 11 Shoreline City Council meeting. Maris Ableson, a Lake Forest Park resident with a child in the district, called into the meeting during public comment, asking the city to push forward on a street safety project along 25th Avenue. 

“Many new young drivers speed through that stretch,” she said. “Last week, I saw a student have to stop midway across the street as a car barreled through. If he had not been looking, he would have been hit by that car and likely killed.”

School district spokesperson Rachel Belfield credited the city for “doing due diligence and research” to protect the community.

WADOT drops speed limit on Aurora Ave. 

The City of Shoreline announced last week that the speed limit on Aurora Avenue — State Route 99 — will drop from 40 miles per hour to 35, with the change effective as soon as the city has installed new signage. The decision was made by the Washington State Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over state highways.

Shoreline’s 2022/2023 traffic report — which was presented to the city council last year — said that WSDOT planned to study the speed limit along Aurora and that the agency may recommend lowering the speed limit.

The city’s report found an increase in crashes on Aurora Avenue between 2021 and 2023, as well as an upward trend in crashes on both Aurora and Ballinger Way (also known as State Route 104), dating back to 2014. Injury collisions have trended upward over the past 10 years, as have serious and fatal collisions, per the city’s study.