Editorial:

This morning, a group of parents at Edison Elementary School is expected to rally at the intersection of Chandler Boulevard and Keystone Street, imploring the city to assign a crossing guard to the busy intersection near the school.

“Busy” might be an understatement — at least on weekday mornings when parents walk and drive their children to school. Chandler Boulevard North, Chandler Boulevard South and the Chandler Bikeway all cross Keystone Street a block from the school. The intersection has six stop signs, five crosswalks and a bike lane cutting through the middle.

With dozens of kids passing through the intersection on the way to school, that kind of traffic mishmash can be disastrous. Just consider the tragedy in Glendale in October, when an 11-year-old Toll Middle School student was struck and killed in a crosswalk by a distracted parent driver. And that accident involved only a single crosswalk. A driver making a U-turn from some parts of the Keystone-Chandler intersection goes through three.

Naturally, we support any measures necessary to make the area outside Edison Elementary safer. The question remains whether a crossing guard is the appropriate way to go.

Ken Johnson, Burbank’s traffic engineer, said he had visited the intersection multiple times and, despite its tangled nature, had not seen any near-accidents. He added that in the last five years, there have been only three accidents at the crossing, and none of them was serious.

“It can be a confusing intersection,” Johnson said. “But even if people don’t stop, they slow way, way down. So the odds of something happening there are very slim.”

The intersection, Johnson said, doesn’t see enough pedestrians or cars in an hour to meet the usual criteria for needing a crossing guard. Still, that hasn’t prevented parents from pushing the city to implement a guard.

One parent said he doesn’t even allow his preteen children to walk to school alone because of the amount of traffic lanes merging together. It is reasonable to assume that part of the reason for the intersection having so few accidents is because parents insist on accompanying their kids through it.

Statistics, of course, turn irrelevant as soon as a tragedy occurs. So we thank the Edison parents, along with Johnson and other city officials, for taking a close look at a location that appears rife with risk.

The parents, who have already asked the city’s Traffic Commission for a crossing guard, plan to meet with Johnson on Feb. 12 to discuss the issue further. Johnson said he is hoping to have police representatives at the meeting as well. At some point in the near future, the City Council will likely address the matter as well.

A crossing guard couldn’t hurt. Whether the area meets given criteria or not, better safe than sorry.

But whether the best solution to the Keystone-Chandler intersection is a crossing guard or some other measure, we hope the city will take the appropriate action quickly. As recent events in Glendale have shown, it’s hard to be too careful when children’s safety is in question.