NOTE: This editorial was written by a guest writer as part of an English 4 and Talon partnership.
Timber Creek is shaped like a big E, a big E that has terrible flow, with more traffic than I-35 during construction.
Let me set the scene: You are on your way to class and you have to move from your AP US History class at the back of South Hall to your Algebra 2 class in the back of North Hall, the opposite end of the school. You have only two ways of getting through the hall, and your choices are either upstairs, or downstairs.
Both of the options are bad, and you are having to choose between the lesser of two evils. If you go upstairs, you will have to go through the Central Hall upstairs intersection, which has people coming from four directions in a space smaller than a classroom. If you do not like that option, you could go downstairs, where about a hundred students just stand, in the middle of the hall, screaming at each other or whatever they do in the giant hallway blocking mass. That area is the driving equivalent of trying to get through a seven car pile up.
There is a solution to this problem, a very simple but expensive solution: just add another hall. Turn the E of Timber Creek into a B. Connect North, Central, and South hall at the other ends in order to give students an alternative to the mess that is the Central Main intersection. This fifth hall would split the crowd effectively in half, allowing students to get to class in record time.
This extra speed could be used to shorten passing period, or give students some extra time to do something more productive, like using the restroom without interrupting class time, or getting a snack from the vending machine.
This solution may be time consuming and expensive, but so was adding Central hall in the first place.