Background Research
Our study was to form an experiment that shows a relationship between the time a student walks out of the doors North Olmsted High School and the time he or she leaves the parking lot. In order to obtain relevant background knowledge, we used Google to search for queries such as "rush hour studies", or "traffic flow studies". When looking for background knowledge, we could not find an exactly similar study online because our study is specialized toward traffic flow in parking lots. The most similar study that we found was the traffic flow on the Maryland Interstate Highway during the times of 2:00p.m. and 6:00p.m on weekdays. The experiment shows that the flow of traffic increases between these hours. There is also a higher rate of accidents between the times recorded. The traffic rate increases on the interstate highway in Maryland at about 2:30p.m. on weekdays and begins to clear up at around 5:30p.m. This is analogous to the traffic in our parking lot: there is a “rush period” where traffic slows to a crawl, and a time when the parking lot begins to empty quickly. In conclusion, our study is much like the study of traffic on the Maryland Interstate Highway. For duration of time, the traffic increases in the observed area - causing a delay in getting from point A to point B. This delay is recurring daily and varies day-to-day in both studies.
Another study by the International Labour Office of Geneva shows the benefits of implementing staggered release times. Using our data, we could make a case that staggered release times would be beneficial to parking lot congestion. With the removal of senior “early out” for the 2013/2014 school year, the seniors add a large volume of cars to the parking lot. If seniors could still have “early outs”, congestion would be minimized. With the overlap release of the upperclassmen and the lowerclassmen, the congestion of the parking lot is significantly increased than in recent years because of all four class levels, freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior, the seniors typically have the most students who drive to school. Thus, with a similar congestion time as parents picking up their children and students leaving the small parking lot, the result is a large congestion that backs up the main parking lot running out to Burns Road. Both The International Labour Office of Geneva and The Maryland Interstate Highway system show the same conclusion as our study which is that during certain times of the day, including rush hour for the Interstate Highway and the Geneva experiment, and for our experiment, the release of students from school after 11th period. In all of the experiments, the space being tested becomes congested during the tested time and the time to get from point A to point B increases due to traffic.
http://www.roads.maryland.gov/OPPEN/2013_Maryland__Mobility.pdf