Brendan Hoffman (’24)

Stairway 5 is commonly backed up with student traffic between classes.

Between classes, students at RMHS are experiencing traffic in stairwells and hallways because of crowds moving through the small doorways and spaces found in some parts of the school. 

When taking into account that going from one end of the school to the other can take multiple minutes and the fact that the passing period was shortened from 4 to 3 minutes at the start of last year, there is a possibility that traffic may be causing students to be late to classes.

The traffic is most prevalent around stairs, which are less than half the size of the hallways that students are entering them from. The worst traffic happens on the upper levels of stair 5 which leads out into the 4th-floor hallway, where there is only a single door students can exit from. A glass pane covers one-third of the space. Only one student can fit through this doorway at a time, and when students are coming from both directions Doorway at top of Stair 5 people are frequently completely stopped while waiting for others to go through the door. People often bump into each other in this doorway.

When asked about traffic in the school, senior Bryce Gray said, “It’s usually not too bad except in a few places. Other than the 4th floor doorway, the other traffic is usually pretty manageable.” 

There are other spots where students are slowed down, like the stair 2, the main staircase students use to get to the cafeteria. Its entrances are very crowded at the start of each lunch, wasting students’ time. Two other staircases lead to the cafeteria, but they are not used nearly as much, and more students using those instead may be a good way to mitigate the problem. 

Gray also commented on possible solutions, “For the 4th floor traffic either some people should go up the other stairs or they should just make it wide enough for two people.”