Editor’s Note: After this piece was published in Eagle Nation Times, the traffic barriers were taken down.
As the number of students at Prosper High School increases and the parking lots stay the same size, traffic barriers have been placed around them to prevent disarray.
These barriers fail at their attempt to alleviate traffic.
While these patterns try to keep traffic organized, they fall flat. Students become only more frantic and frustrated when they try to get out of the parking lot as these guides are unsuccessful.
They are not effective in their attempts, causing more harm than help to students at PHS.
The new traffic patterns are not safe for students. Many of the students at Prosper are new drivers — a large portion of the student body consists of 16-year-olds who have just gotten their license or permit. Students may drive into and collide with the barriers, creating unsafe obstacles. This creates more chaos and problems for the school, along with the fact that the patterns are difficult to get around already.
Furthermore, going to and from school can be an ordeal. Students arrive late due to traffic outside of the parking lots already, with Preston and Frontier being backed up due to the number of people that drive on them, and the traffic patterns in the school parking lot do not help with that factor.
The traffic patterns have a good intention: to maintain order and to keep students safe. They are placed in the parking lots to help to help guide traffic. But, despite this, their effort to keep the traffic steady and minimized is ineffective.
Therefore, the traffic patterns in the Prosper High School parking lot are unsafe for students, create chaos for all people at the school and are — as a whole — unsuccessful.
Students are stressed, traffic continues and the parking lots are still a mess— no matter the attempts to keep the parking lots void of distress.
To relieve this problem, the elimination of these traffic barriers would be favorable if students were given the opportunity to find out the best ways to minimize traffic and possible collisions. A new form of patterns could be established, and students would have the chance to park and drive in ways that they feel safe and secure.
Traffic is a guarantee no matter what, but the traffic patterns created due to the blocked-off sections cause more harm than good in the long run.
Creating new traffic patterns will be time consuming and challenging, but at the end of the day, the focus of the outcome of this change would be the most important: the well-being of the students.
