To the editor:

As anyone who drives to the High School knows, the traffic situation around the school has gotten out of hand. 

Cars line up and endure 10- to 15-minute waits just to drive forward a few hundred feet. Teachers are trapped in their parking lot while attempting to cut through the long line of traffic. Parents desperate to avoid the lines have begun driving into the student parking lot, congesting an already overpacked lot and preventing students from pulling in and out of parking spaces. 

I believe one very simple change would help alleviate the traffic. I have never been able to understand why the pickup circle in the front of the school has cars flow in the opposite direction of the lane they enter from. With the current system, cars driving in the lane closest to the school drive forward, then turn right into the pickup circle and then head the opposite way. In order to exit this semi-circle, cars must cut back through the same lane they just came from, causing the pace of traffic in that lane to become tediously slow. 

Instead, the direction cars must enter the pick up circle should be changed. This way cars driving in the lane closest to the school could drive forward, enter the lane still moving forward, and exit the lane still moving in the same direction, without having to cut through a line of cars. This would streamline the flow of traffic. The line parents wait in to pick up students would flow much faster, then the teachers would be able to exit earlier, and parents would no longer have a need to enter the student parking lot. All of this could be achieved with a change as simple as switching the direction of a one way sign. 

Here is a link to it in a document if you need: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iLgMlJ63RswnbkfBampfgEdpA9kCfO-Qz50p-MHtGiA/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you so much and have a great day!

Jane Small

Barrington High School student