Parents, locals and school officials were caught by surprise when the city of Sammamish re-striped Trossachs Boulevard, adding a bike lane in front of Cascade Ridge Elementary School, in what city officials are admitting was a failure of communication.

The bike lane was a response to complaints last summer about speeding along Trossachs Boulevard when school was letting students in or out of school.

“Our traffic engineers also sat out there and observed traffic conditions,” Public Works Director Laura Philpot said. “We asked, what were things we could do with the roadway configuration to slow things down?”

However, supporters and opponents of the change never were consulted regarding the new bike lane.

“It was just done behind our back,” Simona Saint, who voiced her complaints about the project to the Sammamish City Council, said. “That is a walking community. There are no school busses, so most families are walking and dropping off their kids.”

Opponents like Saint cite that the new lane, which runs down the middle of the street next to a constricted northbound vehicle lane, does nothing to reduce speeding and just puts kids in bicycles closer to traffic. The new lanes also removed about 15 parking spaces in the street, forcing families coming to the school for after-school programs to park further up the road.

“They have a standard, but they need to re-look at the standards,” Saint said.

Supporters, however, say that the new lanes have slowed traffic down.

“I think it’s great,” resident Don Blayney said. “We have a lot of little kids around and people are speeding through, a lot of them on cell phones. What the bike lane does is make the drive lane smaller, and it forces drivers to slow down and pay attention.”

Although officials with Cascade Ridge Elementary declined to speak on record with the Reporter, they did issue a statement saying that while they were not consulted by city officials prior to the change, their No. 1 goal remains student safety. Following the new lanes, safety officials have seen an overall decrease in driver speed in the area, according the school’s statement.

School officials sent a note to parents detailing the new lanes and the loss of parking on Trossachs before the beginning of the school year.

Philpot said that city officials will be studying the impact the lanes have had on traffic patterns in the area for the next year, before sharing the results with the community and soliciting feedback on what changes can and should be made. No legal notices were issued by the city because re-striping projects that do not affect the capacity of a road do not fall under Washington’s public notification laws.

“In retrospect … we absolutely take full responsibility,” Philpot said. “We should have done a better job of reaching out and doing some work ahead of time.”