Picture this: a girl, age 9, is trying to cross the street to get to her dance class that has recently begun after the summer break. As she goes to peek around a parked car to see if it is safe to cross the street, a school bus speeding around a corner comes inches from her face, almost causing her serious harm. The likelihood of this happening to another child may increase as a result of the possible elimination of parking spaces on Main Street in the Borough of Wellsboro.

Because of a neighbor’s complaint about parked cars blocking the view when leaving a private drive, Wellsboro’s Borough Council has discussed taking on-street parking away in front of the First Position Dance Studio at the western end of Main Street. If parking in front of the dance studio is taken away, more parents would be forced to park across the street/farther down the street, and in turn, more children would have to cross the road to get to the studio. It would be dangerous for a few reasons to take parking away in front of the First Position Dance Studio building on Main Street, but cars speeding on that road and no other convenient/safe options for parents to drop their children off are the main ones.

Parking in front of the studio building is needed not only because it is more convenient for parents to drop off their children, but because it is dangerous for them to cross the street because of the speed at which cars travel on Main Street. Some car mirrors and even a car door has been taken off by cars going too fast and a girl a few years ago got hit by a car trying to cross the street nearby. The building’s current owner and a dance teacher in the studio, Taylor Nickerson, says she worries for her student’s safety almost every day. “I walk kids across the street a few times a night to ensure they are safe,” says Nickerson, who added, “I’m not exaggerating when I say every single time I let kids go from class I worry about their safety.” There is no other convenient option for parents to drop off their kids if the parking spaces are removed and may be forced to drop off in front of the shared driveway to the left of the studio building or pull into surrounding neighbor’s driveways.

As previously mentioned, the only other option is to park across the street. And as the story in the introduction showed, young people crossing the street with cars speeding past can prove to be very dangerous. I should know, because the little girl who almost got hit by the bus was me.