REPUBLIC Mo. — The Republic school district held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday for their new queuing road at Sweeney and Lyon Elementary schools. 

The district hopes this new line-up road will help alleviate traffic congestion on main street and Highway 174.  

Sweeney and Lyon Elementary had a short-term solution last year with staggered pick-up and drop-off times, but the district hopes this long-term solution helps make the process a little smoother. 

“To see it today being done and almost ready for families to be able to drive on, it feels really good,” Republic Superintendent Dr. Matt Pearce said. “Because I know how hard we’ve worked to get all the partners involved to make this happen.”  

The entrance to the new queuing roads is off Main Street. The road wraps around itself behind the schools so that cars can wait while dropping off and picking up their kids.  Local parents said they are excited about the addition.  

“It gets backed up in the morning and in the afternoon,” said Sarah Lane a teacher at Sweeney Elementary as well as a district parent. “And this is really going to help get parents and kids safely onto our premises and get them dropped off and picked up in a much, I think, quicker manner and definitely safer.”  

“The most scary part would be for our families from Lyon Elementary when they would exit out on the highway 174,” said. Dr. Pearce “There would be traffic pulled over, car line traffic pulled over on the side of the road. And then there’s cross traffic going 45, 50 miles an hour that they’re trying to pull through to either go right or left on Highway 174.”  

 The addition of the new road allows Sweeney and Lyon Elementary to have the same start and finish time as other elementary schools in the district as well.

 “It’s going to help alleviate the problem way better than it had than I think the start times did,” Lane said. 

The City of Republic said they are happy to see this project completed. 

“The traffic improvements will be much better than what they were before,” said City Administrator David Cameron. “If you’ve ever seen this spot from about 745 to 830 in the morning, there was a lot of frustration for those of us that even traveled through those intersections ourselves that did not have students to drop off at school.” 

The district said there will be a learning curve with this new system the first few days of school, so they encourage parents to look at the new drop-off and pick-up path before school starts on Monday.