Short on time?

There are 4,500 students and staff at Cherry Creek High School. From Monday to Friday, all of these people are trying to get to school on time. For most of last year, only half of Creek’s students were on the roads on any given morning. But as we get back to normal, traffic has become a problem again. For some students, the drive to school each morning has become nearly unmanageable.

“It [takes] 20 to 30 minutes, maybe even longer,” freshman Emerson Riegler said. Riegler also said if she gets behind traffic, she’s stuck there for double the time.

If it wasn’t for school traffic, Riegler could leave home almost 20 minutes later and still get to school on time.

Other students face similar predicaments.

Junior Ella Dann stated that she leaves at 7:30am to “avoid the bulk of traffic.” She has to leave 50 minutes before school so she can get there in a timely manner.

On Aug. 24, an Amazon truck flipped over on I-25, backing up roads in Greenwood Village. For freshman Kate Maloney, this incident resulted in her being later than normal to school, which made it hard to find a parking spot.

“It took almost 5 minutes, just to find a parking spot,” Maloney said.

Meanwhile, on Aug. 25, a car broke down on the light at Dayton, backing up the cars all the way to South Havana Street.

However, while accidents do happen, most of the traffic Creek has seen this semester is just due to the normal volume of students and staff, which is too much for the roads.

This issue of traffic impacts students negatively, and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

“Getting to school is definitely hard, especially if I don’t beat the traffic,” said Riegler.