Traffic Queuing
Improving school arrival and departure sequences involves diagnosing circulation problems, designing pragmatic interventions, and typically integrating durable physical upgrades. The Tetra Tech team begins by defining measurable goals—shorter vehicle queues, faster bus loading, reduced pedestrian delays, and the reduction of potential conflicts —then building an evidence base using repeated time‑lapse drone video supplemented by ground observations and brief spot counts. Drone time‑lapse gives the team a continuous record across the entire site and adjacent streets to analyze flow interactions, queue formation, mid‑block crossings, disruptive curb stops, and the timing relationships between cars, buses, and pedestrians.
Tom Farlow, PE is a Project Manager who engages technology to capture the footage needed for evaluations. “Using drone timelapse to capture arrivals and departures gives us a clear, snapshot of what otherwise looks like chaos. The constant movement at the start and end of the school day is ideal for this technique. It shows vehicle and pedestrian flow patterns over time, reveals inefficiencies, and highlights pinch points that frustrate administrators, staff, bus drivers, parents, student drivers, and pedestrians. With that bird’s-eye perspective we can quickly diagnose problems and design targeted, practical improvements that make arrival and dismissal safer, smoother, and less stressful for everyone."
Video footage provides time‑stamped annotations that allow the team to extract key metrics: peak queue length, average dwell time in the drop‑off zone, bus staging durations, crosswalk usage, and conflict locations. We overlay these observations onto site plans to produce time‑space diagrams and a simple queueing analysis that reveal chokepoints—narrow drive aisles that force alternating flows, buses and cars sharing the same curb, sidewalk gaps that encourage unsafe crossings, and sightline obstructions at driveways. Using drone footage as the primary evidence helps the team prioritize fixes by risk and throughput impact with data.
Learn more from our team about how changing traffic patterns at school arrival and dismissal can improve safety, reduce congestion, and make daily routines more predictable. Thoughtful reconfiguration addresses conflict points between vehicles, buses, cyclists, and pedestrians, lowers the risk of crashes and near‑misses, and shortens queuing time so staff and families spend less time idling and stressed.
Tom Farlow, PE is a Project Manager that champions the use of field-forward technology to collect data that informs and advances project concepts. An FAA‑certified remote pilot, he delivers professional drone photography, videography, and photogrammetry services for our clients.
