If you have tried to park in any of the student parking lots after 8:30 a.m., you understand continuously circling like a vulture until you’re able to snatch up a spot or make your own. 

The parking lot, once a semi-functional patch of asphalt, has devolved into a daily exercise of frustration, inefficiency and chaos. Why the current system is still standing is incomprehensible.

Let’s start with the obvious: there are not enough spots. Students who spent $120 on legitimate permits prowl the lot, waiting to find a spot that doesn’t exist, while teacher lots have dozens of empty spots. While I recognize that it is difficult for admin to enforce the parking spots, it is something that affects students day-to-day and even causes tardiness, and somehow there is still no solution.

At one point, the parking lots served their purpose. They gave students a place to land between their tightly packed schedule dictated by bells and extracurriculars. It worked, or at least it didn’t work against them.

Now the lots have turned into pure strategy: how early must I wake up? How many laps can I afford to take around the parking lot before I’m late to class? Can I drive home during my prep at the risk of not getting a spot when I come back?

While we are at it, let’s talk about the design –– if you can call it that. The parallel, one-way aisles force drivers to go the wrong direction, creating standoffs with people coming in the correct direction. Also, pedestrians weave through moving cars, and as you drive over the speed bumps, you hear the grueling sound of your car’s underside being scratched. And just when you start to escape the labyrinth for the day, congestion clogs up the lot –– 20 minutes is a good day. 

The parking lots are inefficient and inconvenient. Time spent hunting for a spot could be spent studying, sleeping or, at the very least, not being stuck in a slowly growing cloud of exhaust.

Additionally, many students have been pulled out of class by administration to move their cars if they parked in a “made-up spot.” This is only possible if you have a parking permit, though, because then they can track your license plate number and connect it to who you are. 

The only possible action against people without permits is ticketing by the City of Palo Alto police, and that money doesn’t even go to the school. Essentially, people with permits are being punished for buying a permit. Ironic, isn’t it?

Similarly, if students go home during a prep period, their spot will be snatched up before they come back. In this case, some people park at Town & Country and risk a ticket while others simply make up their own spot.

Of course there are solutions. Show up earlier, park off-campus (at risk of a ticket), bike, carpool. Yes, those options work for some people, but they’re not universal fixes. Not everyone lives close enough to bike, not everyone has the time to arrive at dawn, not everyone can rely on carpools. The burden should not fall on the students to navigate through a dysfunctional system. 

Instead, Paly could assign spots or inform the police of the dozens of people who park without permits. Paly should continue to prioritize seniors and juniors when handing out permits. Anything is better than the current free-for-all, where luck is more important than planning. The parking lots should not be a worry to students. They should be something that works. And right now? They do not.