New Providence High School has a new traffic pattern that has impacted students, parents, and staff. This pattern is one way all throughout the school campus. 

Brian Henry, the principal of NPHS, explained why this traffic pattern is actually effective and vital for the school:  “I think the main purpose of this was to make it a safer situation.”

One concern was for all the kids in the parking lot walking out into oncoming traffic. This has been an ongoing problem for a while. The parking lot is very tight and there are a lot of students that attend the school including middle schoolers.

“Kids are running across the street, and get dropped off in the student parking lot and that concerns me for the well-being of our citizens and safety of our students and staff,” Henry said. 

These concerns gave rise to the effort to solve the problem by instituting a new traffic pattern.

Not everyone is convinced that it is working. There has been a lot of talk from students that the one way streets delay their ride to school, and seem to be dysfunctional. 

Some students have blamed their tardiness on the traffic that builds up outside of the school.

A senior at NPHS said: “It’s such a small and compact area and the hundreds of cars that are coming through is a main reason why a lot of kids, including myself, get to school late, I believe.”

The school has added personal barcodes for kids to track their attendance when they come to school late, but it doesn’t feel like it’s made a difference..

“They add this new traffic pattern at the circle, which I think is the cause of why everyone gets to school late, and now we have ID’s for us that no one uses because the high schoolers just sneak in with the middle schoolers,” said the senior. 

This change has been hard for people to accept, and many avoid the easy fix to this problem, which is to leave earlier than usual so you don’t hit the traffic build up once you enter the school premise. 

Despite student complaints, Mr. Henry thinks it’s important to keep the traffic pattern: “I’m a firm believer that when you change something there’s definitely obstacles at the beginning. It takes time for everyone to get an understanding on it.” 

Daniel Henn, New Providence Chief of Police, played an important role in this new system as well. The safety of the community is what motivates him to come to work everyday.

“The idea of being able to service the population that I’m a part of is something that I hold very dear to my heart. It’s very, very important,” he said. 

The risk of accidents that could be easily avoided at the high school prompted the need for a new plan: “One of the issues that we had seen at the high school was there was a traffic flow issue, with the number of cars coming in and out of the property, turning in and out of the property and trying to get back out of the campus area.” 

This process was not constructed overnight. It took many brains and time for it to be perfected. According to Chief Henn, this idea was proposed around May of 2022 and was engineered during that summer. In every law change there needs to be an ordinance that goes through the Borough council and the public so it can be justified.

“Ordinances have a certain timeline from being listed on the council agenda to having a second reading. That gives the public the opportunity to come and face the council and ask questions about the changes. So that process itself can take about six weeks because there’s not as many council meetings in the summertime,” Chief Henn said. 

Adding fences, cross walks, and a one way directions are all part of the new plan to make the road safer for the students and vehicles. Students who drive to school park in the pool parking lot, by the school, or in the student parking lot. Teachers and staff have their own parking lots, and parents that drop their kids off wait in line on Pioneer Drive where police officers escort the kids to school. The police officers are there in the morning and afternoon enforcing and directing the traffic to try and make it easier.

Even though this traffic pattern is fairly new Chief Henn explains there was an effort to make people aware of it  before school started.

“We had signs and we did mailers, and we tried to educate all the population as best we could,” he said.

Even despite all this, it seemed like a  totally foreign idea to some people when school actually started.

“I would say the first couple of weeks of school we attended the middle school PTO meetings, we attended the High School PTSA meetings to discuss any issues with parents with what they were experiencing. In those first few seven to 10 days. But as the time progressed, we definitely saw people use alternate drop spots. They came in a little bit earlier, the traffic definitely has been flowing better and I think that the pedestrian safety is probably much better at this point,” Chief Henn said.