Student Parking Causes Headaches Nationwide
By AJ S.
At 3:10 p.m. every weekday the road of 128th Avenue in Westminster, Colorado becomes a traffic jam almost as soon as the final bell rings for Mountain Range High School. Over one hundred student drivers rush out into the parking lot hoping to beat the traffic that they cause. To reach Huron Street or 128th Avenue before the traffic swells, a student driver has maybe three minutes to reach their car before they get stuck. Almost any delay in exiting the school causes students to experience a ten or more minute crawl to the exit with multiple horns blaring and ignored turn signals as student drivers attempt to beat parents picking up their kids and school buses which block one of the exits.
This car problem at high schools across the United States has never been specific to just one school or state. In fact, schools everywhere have been encountering this “car problem” for years, a mix of too little parking spaces, crowded drop off lanes, neighborhood traffic jams and hazardous areas for students walking home. What was once a huge milestone for teenagers, obtaining their driver’s license and finding a spot to park at school, has turned into a headache for principals, city traffic planners, police and the school’s neighbors.
National data reflects the sheer scale of the problem. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that 38 percent of public high school principals say that traffic around their campus is a serious safety risk to students. While 91 percent of schools allow students to drive, national surveys show that only about 17 percent of high schoolers drive themselves every day and another 33 percent of students get dropped off by their parents. Therefore, cars bring at least half of all high-school students to school every morning. This is a shift from previous generations when most children took the bus or walked. Research from the Center for Problem-oriented Policing shows that student walking and biking rates have fallen by more than 40 percent in recent decades because of the rise of suburbs and safety concerns while walking. This creates a cycle, as more parents drive their children because they feel that walking is unsafe, all the extra cars from this make walking even more dangerous.
Putting hundreds of teen drivers, who are not very experienced at driving, in a crowded parking lot in a span of fifteen minutes causes a lot of risk. The National Safety Council estimates that over 50,000 crashes occur in parking lots and garages each year across North America causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. High-school parking lots are high risk areas. Teen drivers have limited driving experience, poor spatial awareness and get distracted by phones or friends. They must make decisions and merge while hundreds of other students walk around them. Federal data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administratio
n (NHTSA) shows that pedestrian accidents for school aged kids peaks between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., which is exactly when everyone is trying to leave the parking lot.
There are a few reasons high school traffic has only gotten worse over time. The many suburban high schools built over the decades were built on the edge of their town where land was cheap and sparse, but these roads were only built to handle a few cars at a time. Rapid urban development has grown around these areas causing construction periods and large amounts of roadwork near schools to solve these problems. School districts facing budget cuts have lowered the amount of school buses and increased the distance needed to qualify for a bus or have charged families for bus rides.
The parking section of this problem does not stay only on school grounds. It passes over into surrounding neighborhoods. Due to the reality that high schools rarely have enough parking passes or spots for every student, students without permits or who can’t find a spot have to park on side streets and in the neighborhoods nearby. People living next to or near high schools complain about blocked driveways, trash having been left behind, and teenagers flying down their streets and blasting loud music. Cities and homeowners associations alike tend to respond by putting up no parking signs or towing cars, which creates tension between residents and students.
Beyond safety issues and complaints, getting stuck in traffic has other impacts on students' mental health. Student athletes who need to leave early or quickly for away games, kids who need to get to after school jobs, and students who take college or career classes off campus after school often get held back in the parking lot. Dealing with the wave of cars has students showing up late to a work shift and potentially getting fired, or missing the team bus. Sitting in line having to wait for their turn burns gas and makes an already long school day much more stressful. One 12th-grade student driver stated, “I’ve had so many times where I’ve almost been late to work,” pointing out the impact it’s had on her job and mental health “I always get so stressed when that happens. I just wish it could be quicker to get out.”
Solving the car problem at high schools will require collaboration between school leaders such as principals, security, and administrators, traffic planners, and the students. Some schools are experimenting with staggered dismissal times, making different grades leave a few minutes apart so that everyone isn’t trying to leave at the same time. Other schools are working with the city to add drop off loops, change traffic lights, or hire traffic officers for peak hours such as before or after school. Encouraging carpooling or other forms of transportation by requiring parking passes at a cost, adding bike lanes and more bike racks, and bringing back school buses would also help keep cars off the road. Until schools are able to find solutions, the end of the school day at places such as Mountain Range will continue to be one of the most difficult school hours and it happens right after class ends.
