Stephen F Austin Drive is a wonderful little road. On the left, you have the Austin High campus with the track a few meters down the road, and the senior parking lot with all its creative painted spots. And to the right, you have a beautiful view of the Colorado River, with the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail next to it. However, Stephen F Austin Drive is now synonymous with something not so beautiful: the dismissal traffic line.
The notorious Austin High traffic line is like a natural disaster; it happens too fast to prepare for, and it affects everyone in the proximity. While school dismisses at 4:35, some students don’t arrive home until 6:00. And for those trying to go west to Veterans Drive, they have to deal with a long traffic light that stalls cars for hours. There is no avoiding it.
There have been many theories as to why the line gets as bad as it does. Some speculate it is students parking in the wrong area, or the rush hour traffic from Cesar Chavez blocking the east exit. One thing we know for sure is that the traffic line blocks both the east exit and the west exit, so everyone exiting the school gets blocked in.
As a senior who parks on the west side of campus, my parking spot sits right before Veteran’s Drive. Every day after school, I go straight to Austin Barbell Club, which should be about 16 minutes from school, but ends up taking over 50 minutes with afternoon traffic. The issue comes from the large number of both students and parents trying to go the same way. On top of that, there is rush hour traffic blocking up Foster Avenue. The traffic light at the end of Veteran’s Drive causes the whole street to come to a complete stop, which means the line builds up at an extremely fast rate.
I normally get into my car at 4:35, and escape the school traffic line at around 4:45-4:55 every single day. With that information, from the senior parking lot, it takes about 10-20 extra minutes to get onto Mopac.
On the first day of school, I decided to turn at the exit of the senior lot, and go under the bridge to get onto west Cesar Chavez in order to get to my house. It felt like I was moving a good distance at a good amount of time, however exiting left from the senior lot means you have a much larger portion of Stephen F Austin Drive to cover before you can make it on the highway. I remember I left my parking spot at 4:40, and entered the line around 4:45. Now, to exit that initial line that takes up all of Stephen F Austin took until 5:00 to exit. I ended up getting home at around 5:10. Now, my house isn’t far from my gym, but that does not change the length of the dismissal line. The line itself was about 15 minutes long.
In conclusion, whether you exit the senior lot from the left or right, you will be in the line for roughly the same amount of time, that being 15-20 minutes. The line also varies depending on the rush hour traffic that is already occurring on the highways: the more backed up it is, the worse the dismissal line becomes. As Austin grows, I predict the dismissal line will get worse as rush hour traffic gets worse with the growing population. The best you can do is run to your car and get in line as quickly as possible during dismissal, or wait it out for the next hour until the line disappears.
