By Gonzalo Enriquez
Traffic: It’s a problem that has a huge impact on many at Indian Trail as they battle to get to school each day.
The school parking lot affects everyone, whether you’re a parent struggling to get your child to school on time, a school teacher or faculty trying to prepare before the school day starts, or students trying not to arrive late to their first period.
Students have a lot of different opinions about the school’s traffic problem, students like Abigail Adamson, a General Studies senior, who feels school officials are handling the issue.
“Yeah, after school, the school security guards stand at the other end of the road and put cones to prevent other kids from passing everyone up,” said Adamson.
But some disagree and say the school isn’t doing enough to solve this problem.
“Not really, they just don’t seem to care,” said Justin Malsack, another General Studies senior.
Students have a few suggestions on how to do more to fix the traffic problem.
“I actually think they should expand the parking lot, like the entranceways, so it’s easier to get out and there’s less congestion because there’s way too much traffic right after and before school,” said Adamson.
“New ways to get out of the parking lot or maybe let certain areas of the building out earlier than others so there
are not big traffic jams,” said Malsack.
Many of the suggestions were very simple such as make a new parking lot. One suggestion from Annmarie Shoffner, also another IT General Studies senior, stood out more than the other suggestions made by students.
“They should have people directing traffic outside more than just standing there,” said Shoffner.
Indian Trail High School and Academy’s Principal Maria Kotz expressed different ideas and solutions to the issue.
“We have a few different problems. When this building was originally built and the parking lot and roads were originally put in, I don’t think anyone ever saw the school becoming more than just the academies,” said Kotz.
“Even though it’s a large parking lot, at this point the roadways coming in are small and we have two state highways (K and 158), we have a bad traffic pattern, we have railroad tracks with trains that come through at bad times for us and ultimately the other piece is that everybody likes to arrive at one time. It’s very difficult to convince people to either take the bus, carpool, or to come a little bit earlier. Those are some of the big issues,” she said.
She also mentioned that they’ve changed the traffic flow, which sometimes does not make people happy. They’ve put speed bumps, and they’re ging to be putting more speed bumps and taking out some spots in the guest parking so that people can’t use it as a way to drop off kids.
“In some ways what I would love to do almost is take away the ‘U’ because I think that’s half of the problem. Everyone wants to get their children as close to the front doors as possible when it would probably be better to just drop them off 100 yards sooner and let them walk a little bit,” said Kotz.
The school principal even stated that they have had transportation officials and both the city and school district come out and look at things. They also have changed the street lights as much as the city would allow it to be changed to allow more time for right and left turns.
“If we find students are driving recklessly, they’re given a warning. Then they can get tickets or get their parking passes removed so you know we keep working on those things, but the next piece will be we’re going to be adding more speed bumps in places to kind of slow people down,” she said.
But even with all the traffic issues at the school, the principal has stated that they have to put students’ safety first. Students should arrive at school earlier or carpool or take the bus if they’re having issues getting to school or out of school.