Anger has increasingly climbed throughout the Roswell High School community regarding the ongoing traffic circumstances. Some may say this traffic is caused by the rainy days, but I utterly disagree. Due to the impatience and belligerence of high school drivers, parents’ drop-off and pick-ups and other traffic-related issues that cause backups, this problem must be solved immediately.  

Roswell High School students have found a variety of ways to escape the long lights on Woodstock, Hardscrabble, and Highway 92. Many students and even parents cut through parking lots, going unreasonable speeds hoping to make it to school by the bell. In these parking lots, situations get tense. Students and parents wait at the stop signs for time periods of 15 minutes. Many do not follow the one-by-one rule, meaning that they are not alternating on who gets to go first. Just to clarify, this only applies to those in the parking lot. This causes an excessive amount of back-ups in the parking lot and on the road, causing many students, including myself, to be late. 

While I am a person who tends to cut through the parking lot every morning, this situation causes the most amount of traffic. Drivers on King Road do not pull all the way up at the base of the hill, causing traffic and congestion on 92 in which some cars block the entire intersection which interferes with people attempting to turn left onto King from Highway 92.  

I live 15 minutes away from the school as is, so I leave extremely early to also pick up a few people on the way to school. Once I reach the traffic, it makes my mornings even more frustrating, where most of the time I am pulling into school at 8:18 a.m., if I am lucky.  

This frustration of mine leads to incomprehensible anger towards others, which obviously is not ideal while driving a car. Some people become reckless and speed up the hill, not letting any of the cars in who have been waiting for minutes on end. People must understand that when pulling out of the cut-through parking lot, it is needed to pull into the right lane and pull all the way up the hill.  

There are a variety of solutions to this traffic problem that could be dealt with through control of the city. A more budget-centered solution could be to create a traffic circle outside of the exit of the stadium parking lot. This would create an easier flow of traffic by causing movement to continue. If people know how to use traffic circles, this solution will make everything more efficient. As previously seen, this solution reduced traffic on Hardscrabble. Freshman Ty Blocker mentions, “After school, it shouldn’t take 45 minutes for me to get out of the parking lot. It would make me happier if we had a roundabout because it would relieve my stress of getting home on time for sports.”  

Another budgeted solution could be to create larger or multiple entrances and exits to not only the stadium parking lot, but also the carpool lane. A small lane of entrance allowing only one car to enter causes extreme back-up that can be easily fixed with a widened, or multiple lanes of entrances.  

Through control of the city, it could be decided that the traffic lights could be held longer, especially for certain times of the day, like at 7:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Not only this, but freshman Caroline Doyle says “something we could do that could fix it is making the lane that people have to merge from, go all the way up the hill, making the traffic flow more efficiently.” Therefore, this would clear up the confusion of merging at the bottom of the hill and would allow for less congestion of cars crossing the intersection. People get very confused and believe that the lane is ending too early.  

My final remark is that parents should not be allowed to pick up or drop off their children in the senior, or stadium, lot. It is unfair to the students because the more cars there are, obviously, the longer it takes to get to school or leave. A crossing guard would help dramatically, but I understand that it is out of control of the administrative staff.  

If some of the recommendations are taken this could certainly reduce the number of near-crash experiences for students and the community at 8:00 a.m.