Lack of traffic during half term

[hubner]

I noticed during half term, motor traffic was like on a Sunday. On one road, there was hardly any motor traffic queuing when it's very busy and slow moving during weekday rush hours.

Are there that many people who take the week off? As I don't think having no school runs would reduce traffic by that much.

[yoav]

You'll be amazed how much school runs contribute to the traffic on the roads. I can't remember the %age offhand but it's 'quite a lot'.

[graculus]

I have a vague memory from many years ago of reading that during school hols the rush hour traffic dropped by 10-15%, but have no idea where that was from.

[giropaul]

It’s remarkable. My daughter commutes into Manchester some days, and it’s up to 40 minutes difference.
I think that a lots to do with the crazy ( in my view) “market” in school places. When I went to school you went where you were told by the Education Authority. That would in all likelihood be the nearest school. If it was ( I think) 4 miles or more a bus or taxi was provided.
Now parents vie for a “ better” school, and have to transport children miles. Other parents will likely cross routes with them in the opposite direction.

[FifeingEejit]

You'll be amazed how much school runs contribute to the traffic on the roads. I can't remember the %age offhand but it's 'quite a lot'.

When I used to drive to work every day on a 8 mile journey, I knew when I hit town if it was a Dundee School Holiday.
There was one day I got it so clear and every traffic light was a green that I beat the 1812 Overture's cannons to work.

My best during Lockdown was 12 mins. (I should note that about 5 of the 8 miles was rural roads and NSL or the Bridge at 50mph)

[Kim]

AIUI the school run accounts for something like 10% of traffic.  But also that the relationship between volume of traffic and congestion is non-linear, so the absence of school traffic makes things flow much more freely.

[Lightning Phil]

It’s remarkable. My daughter commutes into Manchester some days, and it’s up to 40 minutes difference.
I think that a lots to do with the crazy ( in my view) “market” in school places. When I went to school you went where you were told by the Education Authority. That would in all likelihood be the nearest school. If it was ( I think) 4 miles or more a bus or taxi was provided.
Now parents vie for a “ better” school, and have to transport children miles. Other parents will likely cross routes with them in the opposite direction.

Indeed, kids no longer go to local schools hence all that school pick-up traffic from 2pm to 4pm and drop off traffic 8am till 9am.

[FifeingEejit]

In Dundee dedicated school buses aren't really provided despite school mergers having made some kids commutes well over the threshold,.
School choice isn't really a thing either.

So on my journey I will come across:
Fife traffic taking kids to Dundee High (Independent School in town centre)
East Central Dundee traffic taking kids to Morgan Academy. (About 100m from work)
The odd family that's moved but opted to not switch schools.
and that's it.

What really impacts the traffic volumes is that when the schools are off, in most cases at least one of the parents are also off.

[hatler]

AIUI the school run accounts for something like 10% of traffic.  But also that the relationship between volume of traffic and congestion is non-linear, so the absence of school traffic makes things flow much more freely.

This ^ ^.

Congestion is principally a function of junction capacity.

If a junction can handle 50 movements a minute, and only 49 cars turn up, there's no jam. If 51 turn up, there's a jam.

Taking school run traffic out of the equation (and also all those families that go on holiday that week) regularly drops the demand for junction capacity below the congestion threshold.

[ElyDave]

It’s remarkable. My daughter commutes into Manchester some days, and it’s up to 40 minutes difference.
I think that a lots to do with the crazy ( in my view) “market” in school places. When I went to school you went where you were told by the Education Authority. That would in all likelihood be the nearest school. If it was ( I think) 4 miles or more a bus or taxi was provided.
Now parents vie for a “ better” school, and have to transport children miles. Other parents will likely cross routes with them in the opposite direction.

Indeed, kids no longer go to local schools hence all that school pick-up traffic from 2pm to 4pm and drop off traffic 8am till 9am.

Local schools is somewhat subjective these days

Local vocational, sporting, academic?

Academic 6th forms are all Cambridge from here, so train and drop off at railway station. Rural living has compromises

[arabella]

there's also the "not being tied to school drop off/pick up times" effect on commuter traffic so it's not all clustered around being outside $school at 8:40am or whenever.

[Wycombewheeler]

I think a relatively small reduction in vehicle movements causes a significant reduction in traffic queues

so in half term you lose the school run traffic, but you potentially also lose a significant proportion of the parents who are taking the week off, either because they are going on holiday, or because somebody has to be home with the children.

You can tell it's not just the school run traffic making the difference, because the evening rush hour (when most children will already be at home) is also much easier than on a normal week.

[FifeingEejit]

I should note, Dundee traffic rarely becomes traffic jamic, you need to shut the bridge or one of the inner ring road bits to do that.
It's more a case of being in a queue of 5 cars at a traffic light vs getting either straight through or up to the light, and waiting for a while at a ciricle to get out or getting straight out

[pcolbeck]

Where I used to work we had the opposite. Our office was on an estate that also had a multiplex cinema. At half term at 5:30 the whole estate would grid lock due to the number of people leaving / arriving at the cinema.

[MikeFromLFE]

It’s remarkable. My daughter commutes into Manchester some days, and it’s up to 40 minutes difference.
I think that a lots to do with the crazy ( in my view) “market” in school places. When I went to school you went where you were told by the Education Authority. That would in all likelihood be the nearest school. If it was ( I think) 4 miles or more a bus or taxi was provided.
Now parents vie for a “ better” school, and have to transport children miles. Other parents will likely cross routes with them in the opposite direction.

This.
Although as ElyDave points out it's not so straightforward in rural areas as it is in cities.
The market in school places is a sham marketplace designed to bolster the incomes of the Academy companies (I don't know if they really are 'for profit' but I do know there's some humongous salaries for the management teams).
Why is society prepared to accept that some schools are 'better'? Shouldn't all schools be excellent?
Parents criss-crossing suburbs by car, and getting children out of bed at unearthly hours are manifestations of the market madness.

[FifeingEejit]

Why is society prepared to accept that some schools are 'better'? Shouldn't all schools be excellent?

Even with all public schools here being comprehensives, there's still "good" and "bad" schools.
But then the schools have their own employed pool of staff, so the 3 schools in North East Fife (Madras, Bell Baxter (boo hiss), Wade (booooooo))* can attract better teachers than those in say Levenmouth, because well you're mostly going to be dealing with kids with a considerably different outlook on life.
Same in Dundee, there's 3 good non-dom schools (Grove, Harris and Morgan) in the more affluent areas and the good Catholic school is St Johns with St Pauls being an amalgmation of Lawside and St Saviours which were both rough schools.

But then it only takes 1 head teacher change to wreck that **

* Take a guess which one I went to
** See Madras under Lindsay Matheson as an example

[The Family Cyclist]

My kids go to their nearest school and despite it being well under a mile have consistently been in the minority in not being driven despite many kids living closer or similar difference

[ElyDave]

We have a primary school in our village, 1km walk. Because it also serves a few surrounding villages its oversubscribed due to siblings and other rules. My daughter was 35th on the list for 30 places, despite being on the edge of the village. Minimum commute therefore becomes at least 5km.

If only we'd bought the other house we looked at in the village.

[The Family Cyclist]

We have a primary school in our village, 1km walk. Because it also serves a few surrounding villages its oversubscribed due to siblings and other rules. My daughter was 35th on the list for 30 places, despite being on the edge of the village. Minimum commute therefore becomes at least 5km.

If only we'd bought the other house we looked at in the village.

ED obviously it's probably impractical for you not to drive and have had that discussion with people before but the bulk of the parents I know could easily walk or cycle particularly in the last two years when those who work have WFH. My wife cycles to drop the kids off when she's working as works in town and genuinely is the most efficient way of getting to school and to work.

Our neighbours historically driven their child and when I've been able to do the school run I am home before them cycling when they drive

[fd3]

... in half term you lose the school run traffic, but you potentially also lose a significant proportion of the parents who are taking the week off, either because they are going on holiday, or because somebody has to be home with the children.

You can tell it's not just the school run traffic making the difference, because the evening rush hour (when most children will already be at home) is also much easier than on a normal week.

I were pondering that.
I do get well narky about the school run traffic (and I is a teacher and have three kids in three different schools) - it's people dropping off their 12+ year olds that annoys me the most.

[ElyDave]

We have a primary school in our village, 1km walk. Because it also serves a few surrounding villages its oversubscribed due to siblings and other rules. My daughter was 35th on the list for 30 places, despite being on the edge of the village. Minimum commute therefore becomes at least 5km.

If only we'd bought the other house we looked at in the village.

ED obviously it's probably impractical for you not to drive and have had that discussion with people before but the bulk of the parents I know could easily walk or cycle particularly in the last two years when those who work have WFH. My wife cycles to drop the kids off when she's working as works in town and genuinely is the most efficient way of getting to school and to work.

Our neighbours historically driven their child and when I've been able to do the school run I am home before them cycling when they drive

I agree entirely, and if I had that option, I'd have done that. I was lucky enough to be able to walk or cycle to school myself for most of my schooling, or had a bus to the next village.  My favourite school drop off was one day I was cycling to an appointment at Addenbrookes, going through one village I overtook a woman and two kids on a tandem, with the kid on the back waving at me on my outlandish machine (recumbent) and me waving back at him on his

[ian]

I'm getting old now, but when I was in school in the mid-80s no one came by car (I don't remember anyone cycling either). I'm told there's a nasty snarl of traffic around those schools now. It's a modest town, there's really no part of it you couldn't reasonably walk to school, and it's not like people come from far away. My sister used to drive her niece to the same school I attended and walked back and forth to without thought (indeed, if I picked up the pace could be home from in time for Dogtanian).