As the result of an assessment of the intersection of Almond Avenue and North Gordon Way, the Los Altos city council reinstated a traffic guard at the intersection on Monday, September 16.

In September of 2011, after an accident involving a high school student and a truck, the city council met and approved installment of a crossing guard at the intersection of Almond and North Gordon for one year only. City staff contacted All City Management Services, a company that provides schools with crossing guard programs, to assign a crossing guard to the intersection.  At that same meeting, the council also discussed an engineering solution of constructing a raised crosswalk with flashing lights.

In subsequent council meetings on May 8 and June 26 of 2012, the city moved ahead with its plans for a crosswalk, allocating funding and awarding bids for the project. At the June 26 meeting, the city also decided to retain the crossing guard for the 2012-2013 school year.

“We kept the crossing guard in place…for the remainder of the [2012-2013] school year just to monitor how the engineering solution was working,” Chief Police Tuck Younis said.

At the start of this school year, the city discontinued the service of All City Management Services and scheduled an assessment of the Almond and North Gordon intersection for Wednesday, September 11 in order to evaluate the need for a traffic guard.

On Wednesday, August 28, two weeks before the assessment, sophomore William Jow was hit by a car while riding his bike past the intersection of Almond and Avalon.

The accident prompted several parents, including Rick Jow, Adele Fredriksson and Margaret Suozzo, to speak at the September 10 city council meeting asking for reinstatement of a crossing guard.

“We asked for the crossing guard because… what was happening was that people were just pushing the pedestrian button and the light was constantly going on and cars couldn’t go through Almond and they were getting backed up both ways,” Corrie Dunn, wife of Rick Jow and mother of William Jow, said.

Although the city council took no further action at the meeting, “the accident probably did speed things up a little bit,” Younis said.

The next day, Transportation Services Manager Cedric Novenario conducted the assessment and concluded that a traffic guard was needed.

“That assessment found that a crossing guard was warranted at that location per the…California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, we call it the MUTCD standards,” Younis said.  “And based on that finding, the city contacted our crossing guard service provider to staff the position.”

By the following Monday, crossing guard Clifford Hudson was back at his post, leading groups of students across Almond Avenue.

“I think it is very, very valuable to have that crossing guard in place now,” Suozzo said. “I feel much more secure for the safety of our students.”