New pedestrian gate offers safety, convenience

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Darren Scott
  • 460th Space Wing Public Affairs
Timeliness is one of the most common standards enforced in almost any workplace, and getting ready for work and getting out the door on time can be a challenge, especially for parents.

In order to ease the stress of getting children on base to the new P-8 school across the street, Team Buckley has built a new pedestrian gate that significantly cuts down travel time for children to get to the school. The success of that project required a substantial amount of effort from several organizations who came together to make this project happen.

The biggest benefit of the new gate is that it decreases travel time for families on base.

"You can see how close that school is," said Tom Cox, Buckley Air Force Base school liaison officer. "If that gate isn't there, that's 200 families that have to get in their car and drive around the base to get here, through that traffic in the morning. More than 500 people go in and out of that gate every day. From housing it's only about a 7 minute walk."

Aside from the school liaison officer, both base housing and security forces put in a lot of work to make the dream of having a pedestrian gate, which is located just outside of base housing, a reality.

"Of course they still had the option to come back and say no, this is not going to happen," Cox said. "But to their credit they made it work. They said yeah, we can do this."

Convenience was not the only priority to consider. Base security is also a vital component and presented its own set of challenges in getting the gate approved, but that didn't stop Buckley AFB defenders from coming up with a plan to make it work.

"It was brought to us and we immediately went to work on figuring out the best way to do this," said Master Sgt. Michael Burke, security forces operations superintendent. "We worked through a lot of different options."

With hundreds of people going through the gate each day, including parents and children, establishing the new entry point safely was a top priority.

"Regardless of the manpower shortage, the base has needs that still need to be met, and this is one of them," Burke said. "I think we've come up with a decent plan to support our base populace as much as possible. "

With the new gate in place and operational, thanks to the efforts of Team Buckley, families can get ready in the morning without having to worry about some extra travel time and kids can get to school safely.