Every morning, students brave the streets and scrounge the city for any crumb of parking. Some students will arrive at school by carpooling with friends or family. Other students will take alternative transportation, like the bus or bike.
However, the problem is that they will always remain alternatives: the main mode, the triumph of industry, the beacon of American suburbia, the car, looms like a spectre. High school students eagerly learn to drive at the age of fifteen and then get their licenses at sixteen. Driving is entwined with the roots of the modern American high school experience, perhaps even the quintessential American experience. It is about freedom and having the ability to cross miles in minutes. The problem with driving as a Boulder High School student is the parking.
Parking is undoubtedly a disaster at Boulder High. The only parking spots available to students are in the senior lot (Slot), which can’t even fulfill the school’s population of seniors, much less support the whole portion of the student body who drives a car.
The Senior Lot had recently undergone some renovations. The Slot has been newly repainted, and student passes are now being distributed on a lottery system. Some concerns arose among students about the lottery system; however, according to the school’s athletic director, Ryan Bishop, the new shift came to address problems with overcrowding. He stated, “Past seniors were sold passes for spots that did not exist. There were 107 spots in the lot, and over 200 passes were sold. This created a safety issue for the parking lot and caused students to park in the grass, fire lines, and reserved parking areas.”
Just last year, there would always be some sort of chaos with the overcrowded senior lot, as it functioned on a first-come, first-served basis. The new system of assigned parking allows those who have acquired a spot to have peace of mind and assuage the anxiety of morning parking. Yet with the loss of the old system, it has limited the accessibility to other seniors.
The school has “500+ seniors, 130+ staff, and only 249 spots,” according to Mr.Bishop. Doing this lottery was the only fair way to give access to all seniors. In addition to the Senior Lot, the gravel lot has been opened to lottery, which has expanded the amount of parking to “128 cars.”
The other route students can take is city parking. Most popularly around the Goss Grove neighborhood, between Arapahoe and Canyon. Parking is limited to 2 hours in this neighborhood, but it hasn’t stopped many from parking there all day, with the risk of a nasty ticket.
According to Mr.Bishop, the school “can not control the city parking, but we are working with them and trying to come up with options that will be best for our students.” The school has been talking with the city about a solution for Goss Grove and city parking. The extent of the talks is unclear, but the school is “not in negotiations but rather is gaining insight.”
Issues have arisen from the monetary incentives of the city to keep limited parking, and combined with concerns of residents and businesses surrounding the school, the two-hour parking limit is still in place.
So what can be done? The school has been built beside an area called a flood plain. The flood plain is caused by the creek, and combined with strict city codes, upends the idea of building a new school parking garage or expanded parking lots. Bishop toured the school in 2006 and remarked how parking “was an issue then and will be an issue even when I am long and gone from BHS.”
Without a car, students can manage to transport themselves to school in a multitude of ways. Yet the appeal still beckons to many, and the price that those students pay is atrocious parking.
