The school run reduces congestion
It being Whitsun and half term for many school children, people are away and the traffic flow is freer. The school run is seen by many as a significant cause of congestion. The evidence for this is plain for any road traveller to see.
I am sure you have read or heard about people who think that, if we could remove the school run, traffic would run just like in the holidays. If only life could be that simple. That fact is that the school run reduces congestion especially in our major conurbations.
Of course, most roads most of the time do not contain congestion. Without over simplifying the discussion Britain can be divided into two areas: non-congested and congested. In area of land by far the largest is the non-congested category. In these areas the abolition of the school run cannot reduce congestion because there isn’t any in the first place. In congested areas the school run does have an effect but the opposite to that which people would expect.
Most of the rush hour traffic in these congested areas is of three types: business; commuters; and the school run during term time; and, business and commuters in the holidays. If all children walked to school then the traffic in term time would be the same as in the holidays – just business and commuters.
Congestion is caused by the toleration of drivers to put up with it. If drivers had a zero toleration of congestion there would not be any. Surprising but true. However, drivers do tolerate congestion and that toleration can range from zero to total acceptance.
Unless drivers increase their tolerance of congestion the amount of traffic stays constant. In the last twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in ownership of cars by women. The many new drivers displace more long-standing drivers who have a lower tolerance of congestion. Some of these new drivers drive their children to school.
The displaced drivers have either: stopped making the journey; changed their mode of travel; or, moved elsewhere. So when the school term ends it is unlikely that the displaced drivers will start driving to work again as they did before. It is not just displaced drivers. Some people with a new job decide not to drive because of the term-time congestion. Instead they buy a season on the train and become locked into that mode of travel. In consequence, congestion rises and falls with the school terms. The greater the proportion of traffic that is on a school run the lower the congestion is in the holidays.
Does this mean the ETA is campaigning for more people to drive their kids to school? Of course not – for reasons that have been amply described over the years. What we are saying is that those should think again who insist that mothers (and it is still usually mothers) should get off the roads so that people, like themselves, who really need to travel by car have a clear road.
Just as play is work to toddlers, school is work to children and they have as much, or as little, right to go to their workplace by car as adults have to go to their workplace by car. Thinking otherwise is a case of do as I say rather than do as I do – something children hear all too often in their lives. As someone once said – we should look for the plank in our own eye.
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Comments
No - children should not be
No - children should not be ferried to school in individual, private cars. All schools should provide buses for their pupils; thereby cutting down the amount of cars on the road.
Reply by Andrew Davis.
I do not understand why you begin your sentence with "No" as you seem to be agreeing with the ETA that children should walk to school. I think that, in towns at least, all able bodied primary school children should walk to school and secondary school children should be able to cycle. There are exceptions of course but that should be the general practice.
School run
All well and good but I think this is now being over simplistic in the opposite direction i.e. ' children have a right to be driven to school '. The next stage is to say they have a right to drive themselves to school and we should lower the driving age to allow that.
Surely we do not want to lock them into these bad habits at such an early age - far better to say they have a right to be able to cycle or walk to school on safe well designed paths. We might then start to bring up a new generation that is far more enlightened than we have been on transport issues.
Paul Tetlaw
Reply by Andrew Davis
I totally agree with you. This the main reason I set up the ETA. For if a child cannot go to the shops, to friends, to school, to the park by themselves then in my view society is ill and we should make it well again. This article was intended to rebuke people who feel that they have a greater right to the road than others - the victims often being children.
school run
Sorry, just realised it wasn't Andrew Davis's blog I was commenting on, but your editorial. Ruth Wood
school run
I don't find these arguments convincing. Speaking as one (female and childless) who can get to most places on public transport, and who only uses the car a couple of times a week, I am in a position to notice the volume of traffic. During school holidays there is certainly less of it, and the salient point is surely made by Andrew Davis in his last paragraph. We all, children and adults, have only as much right to travel by car as necessity demands. For children, in some cases, though by no means all, safety may demand the use of a car, while for adults the need for car travel is dictated by expense, necessity of carrying work related tools, or inadequate public transport. The important thing is that we should all be thinking more about exactly what is need, and what is mere convenience and comfort.
Ruth Wood
Drivel
This article is badly written illogical twaddle.
How can you say "the school run reduces congestion especially in our major conurbations".?
Plainly it doesn't. I walk to work every day, school hols and term time. I can see the difference. Congestion is worse in term time. The school run exacerbates traffic volume.
If everyone stopped driving to school, the roads would eventually fill up with other folk who decide to put their wants before those of the community and the environment. I accept that. We know that increasing road capacity just encourages folk to fill it, and the same would undoubtedly be true if school travel was not by car thus freeing up some capacity.
But that's not to say that the car-based school run is a good thing. It's bad for the health of our children, society and the environment.
Commuting by car, whether to school or to work, imposes a burden on the whole of society. One day, people will look back in amazement at the selfishness of 20th & 21st century commuters - just as we now look back on slavery, child labour and colonialism and wonder how folk had the nerve to trample over the rights of their fellow human beings in such a way.
We need to seriously rethink the way we live our lives.
Reply by Andrew Davis
Thank you for your comments. As you said yourself, "if everyone stopped driving to school, the roads would eventually fill up with other folk who decide to put their wants before those of the community and the environment". And unless people can be persuaded or forced to do otherwise that is what will happen. So in a perverse way driving your children to school can reduce congestion. I agree with you that we do need to seriously rethink the way we live our lives. I walk my children to school because I enjoy it. It also happens to be good for them, for me, for society and it's cheaper too.
school run
How strange that there are fewer cars parked in the streets during half term and the holidays, if the reduction in traffic is due to the school run.
I would suggest that a small reduction in the traffic flow produces a disproportionate effect on traffic flow rates, which I'm sure any traffic model would confirm. This will be seen even if only 5-10% of people go away for the break.
It is unfortunate that the ETA rehashes the misogynistic ramblings of taxi drivers.
I'm not sure it's even that
I'm not sure it's even that simple. How much of the traffic reduction in holidays is caused by people going on holiday at that time i.e. so they're not driving to work either?
What proportion of people drop their kids of on the way to work?
There seems to be a lot of focus on the school run, with everyone forgetting that the majority of traffic is actually caused by commuters.
The school run reduces congestion
Nice one, Andrew. It's all too easy to make children (and their parents) the scapegoats. And who can blame parents for not wanting to let children walk or cycle to school when the roads are so very, very dangerous. (statistics show the greatest risks to children are not stranger danger but road traffic accidents)
Sheila Rose
Statistics
That is true, although the recent ONS data shows that even these figures are fairly low.
The reduction in traffic would surely result in less risk to children on the pavement?
Local Authority Policy
There is at the present time a Government and DCSF policy known as BSF - Building Schools for the Future. In some cases this has meant that LA have decided to completely rebuild the schools with some amalgamation, and in some cases the removal of the "Local" school. In these cases the previous "walk to school communities" will become bus and car to scholl communities. Good future thinking.
school run
The school run does increase local congestion here in Reading because
the mothers drive 1/2 mile to school when in the past the kids would walk!
In the school holidays the roads are deserted here .
Granted bus fares here are too high to pay for fancy new "green" alcohol fuel buses.
That fact is that the school run reduces congestion
Evidence?
Reply by Andrew Davis
I have just explained it to you. Are you saying that you have never experienced the reduction in congestion during half-term?