At the beginning of every school year, there always seems to be a slight increase in traffic. Unfortunately, this year, the amount of traffic hasn’t gone down like it usually does. Instead, it feels like the opposite has happened, and now, it can take up to 15 minutes to leave campus.

“There’s been instances where the line has been long, which has made it difficult to try to leave.” Junior Jeanice Trat said.

When asked how long it would take to get out of the parking lot, Trat said, “[Getting] Out of the parking lot is a long process, so I’m going to say, maybe 15 or more minutes.”

Our school has the largest parking lot in the district. We have five total parking lots that wrap around the whole school, but even so, there is still so much traffic. So if that’s the case, where does the problem lie?

“I feel like the majority of the [problem of the] whole parking lot is just exiting out,” Senior Isis Ambriz said. “It’s always so packed because the disorganization and just how it’s laid out is very confusing.”

Most of the drivers at our school use the exit that goes onto Gaundabert Lane, which is usually the most packed and creates most of the traffic in our school.

“The irony of it is that we have more parking spaces than we need when we’d rather have more ways to exit because it always just seems like a problem for all students,” Ambriz said.

Currently, there are fewer cars in the lot after school and more on the street, which causes a safety issue for students. But fortunately for us, the admin and faculty have a plan in the works that will benefit our community.

“So we’re getting those signs that tell drivers that they must make a right between hours of three and four.” Assistant Vice Principal Sean Gardere said. “And so that will send them down Gaundabert toward our football field, and then they’ll make the left, and they come back to Chynoweth, which has two lanes.”

With this new plan, the Administration hopes that this will help traffic and create a safer environment for students to walk on the crosswalks.