The OA parking lot is a scary place. There is so much going on and it can be hard to navigate. Not to mention the competitiveness that arises when its comes to getting out at the end of the day. I talked to 5 seniors to get their strategies for the swiftest exit.
From my research, I have found 4 major factors that contribute to how quickly you get home. They are as follows: how early you get to school in the morning, which area/spot you park in, how quickly you get to your car after school ends and what direction you leave.
The biggest factor contributing to how fast you get out of the parking lot is how quickly you get to your car. Senior Lauren Sellmayer has the need for speed. She says she “legit sprint[s] all the way to [her] car” once school ends. Senior Jessie Bello agrees, saying “I rush out of the school and pull out usually by the time I get to my car there’s little to no traffic.” I personally couldn’t agree more. How quickly you get out of the school zone has a lot to do with how fast you get to your car. If you get to your car quick, you are less likely to have to wait to pull out and less likely to get stuck in a long line of traffic. I have parked almost everywhere, and for the most part, I have managed to avoid traffic if I aggressively speed-walk the second the bell rings. Seniors Melanie Yelle and Carys Lentine both say that depending on what class they end with, they might wait near an exit for a minute or two to make sure they are one of the first one’s out of the building. Yelle says that even though she parks in the big lot, she uses the door closest to RO to exit the building to avoid foot traffic within the school.
Location, location, location. It’s not just important in real estate, but also in a parking spot in a high school lot. The second biggest factor is where you park. Either the exact spot or the general area. The consensus is the closer to an exit, the better. Bello parks in “the dirt”, or the large patch of dirt that backs up into the woods behind the school. This makes for a quick exit because you don’t have to worry about waiting just to pull out of a parking spot to sit in traffic that just leads to more traffic. By parking in the dirt you only have to worry about one set of traffic and only aggressively cutting someone off once. And, if you get to your car quickly, those two challenges aren’t as hard to take on. Senior Rebecca Steves says that she “usually park[s] in the same area every day because it’s closest to the exit [she] take[s] to either get home or go to work.” Sellmayer parks in the “senior lot”, the lot closest to the turf that is supposedly only for seniors (even though many underclassman don’t seem to care). While she may park in an actual parking lot, she thanks her spot close to one of the exits for her speedy departure. She was kind enough to share a visual representation of her strategic parking spot, which she refers to as her “pride and joy”. Notice its location incredibly close to the exit. She also says that she “park[s] in a pull through spot” for optimal pull out speed. And what does she credit with always getting a great spot? Getting here early. She pulls into her unofficial spot promptly at “7:10” every morning. Any time past 7:30 means you are fighting for a good spot. Any time after 7:40, the parking lot is a war zone. I personally get here between 7:35 and 7:40 and often struggle to find a good spot. The farther into the middle of the parking lot you get, the more traffic you get stuck in.
And the last component is which direction you leave in. Whether you head towards Randall or Lothrop. Jessie says that she heads towards Randall, even though she lives in the direction of Lothrop to “avoid bus traffic”. She is referring to the fact that the kids who take the bus have to cross Lothrop street, usually resulting in an extra 5-10 minutes of traffic as drivers have to wait for an opening in the crossers to go through the stop sign. For the first 5-10 minutes, all of the kids travel in one large group, giving almost no opportunity to go through. Steves agrees, saying that “usually driving past RO takes too long” and she needs to sometimes head towards Mansfield anyways for work. Yelle disagrees, saying that “the kids walking to the bus isn’t that bad because it subsides pretty quickly.ยจ
Whatever your parking strategy is, we can all agree that having a good one is necessary to avoid 15 minutes of traffic.