2:20.  The final bell rings.  School is over.

2:21.  Students file out of the building.

2:22.  A few lucky cars escape.

2:23-2:40+.  Chaos.

Frustrated, impatient, immature high school students struggle to get out of the lot.  Cars going every way, cutting each other off and creating near-accidents all over the place.  No sense of who has the right of way.  Chaos.

Students pay to park in the lot, and then get caught in the bottleneck and wait to get out.

Parking lot traffic is a problem experienced all over.  It ranges from small schools like ours to professional sports teams’ lots.

The Washington Redskins had received complaints about their parking troubles and have listened to the fans and done their best to fix it.  They are opening up new lots, as well as hiring an “increased number of parking staff with improved training,” according to a note from the team.

Other high schools have also had troubles with parking lot congestion.  The Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona, in an attempt to lower congestion, is having parent drop-offs and pick-ups in a separate lot.  Leo Junior/Senior High in Indiana has also put a similar practice in place.

There are also companies, like Impact Recovery Systems, that offer products like bollards or posts used specifically to direct the flow of traffic in parking lots.  The school could simply place these during the day to help direct the traffic flow after school.  This could prevent the giant mob of cars that happens to the left of the exit.

So with options in place, why hasn’t the school done anything?

One possibility could be to have a separate area for parent pick-up and drop-offs.  However, AVHS resource office Michael Eliason says that the problem is the school already has the bus loop that is occupied by the school buses before and after school, so there is not enough space to add a drop-off and pick-up area.

Space isn’t the only problem.  It would cost a lot of money to reconfigure the parking lot.  The bond referendum did pass, so the school has some money coming.  However, that money cannot be used any way the school feels, says Eliason; the uses for the money have already been pre-determined.

Even if money was spent on the parking lot, Officer Eliason said the money would most likely go towards improving the lighting in the lot.

Also, it turns out that other than the time students have to wait, the parking lot does not actually cause as many accidents as it would seem; Officer Eliason claims that there are fewer than ten accidents each year.  Some of these aren’t even related to the congestion, but to students backing out of spots.

There is little direction given to students in the lot for a reason.  “In law enforcement, we call it an uncontrolled parking lot, meaning there’s no signals, no diagrams, there’s no arrows down the road saying one way this way or that way,” said Eliason. “With it being uncontrolled, the district doesn’t have the liability if there’s an accident out there.”

In the end, the responsibility is on the students.  They must be patient and respect the other drivers.  The problem exists, and the students must work with it the best they can.