Traffic Headache

When I was in school, most kids either rode the bus or they walked to school. And access to school grounds was designed with this reality in mind.

Nowadays, though, most kids are ferried to school by their parents, with very little of this chauffeuring being neighborhood car pools.

This means that, twice a day, at schools all over town, traffic is tied up for blocks for at least forty-five minutes. School driveways were never meant to handle such a large volume of car traffic on a daily basis.

The traffic snarls are worse in the afternoons, as many parents arrive early to wait for school to let out, which results in parked cars in the right lane backed up for blocks from the school.

Any hapless soul driving by a school at the wrong time will end up mired in this mess, so many people try to avoid driving near a school at that time, which can be rather inconvenient. And I’m sure those who own businesses near schools are less than delighted about the twice-daily traffic mess.

Either schools need to restructure access to school grounds to reflect this new reality, with new schools built to accommodate this from the very beginning, or schools need to make an effort to make riding the bus a more attractive and practical option for students.