Today was the first day of school in our county and, of course, that means traffic was extra nasty this morning. I doubt the rain helped much, but it was still a mess and took me 30 minutes to make a normally 15-minute trip into work.
I was trying to figure out, though, exactly why traffic picks up so much. It’s not school busses, because by the time I’m on the road, they’ve delivered all the kids. So, are there really that many parents that stay home during the summer and then go back to work in September? Where are all these extra people coming from?
Yes, there are teachers and school staff, but again, they’re in school by the time I’m on the road. What’s the deal?
Posted in Cars, Everyday Life
Monica September 5, 2006, 3:05 pm
do a lot of high school students drive themselves?
Maybe a lot of parents stay at home later to get the kids off to school.
Dave Walls September 5, 2006, 4:56 pm
It’s not only the buses (busses? sp?) to consider: Parents driving kids in, kids driving themselves to high school and college.. A lot of it really is parents driving their kids in because, really, who wants to spend an hour or so riding a bus to school? Plus, for many kids, they live “too close” to the school for bussing, according to the school district. Not that I’m bitter about arriving in high school in a minivan or anything….not at all.
It’s a decent sized jump in headcount, but the fact that the busses are so much bigger, can stop traffic whenever they want, and some of them are really poor drivers (Puh-LEEZE don’t get me started on that route), it can create for a big headache.
jk September 6, 2006, 1:03 am
I know! I live 5 miles from my job and it can take me a half hour to get there. For some reason, kind of like sniffing a bottle of milk that you already know is sour, I try to take what I consider to be the quickest route each morning and as soon as I see that Pike, I can see the traffic just crawling. I blame a lot of my problems on people making left turns from roads that do not have left-turn lanes. The cars just stack up…..arghhhh!