School run giving parents the traffic blues

The hearts of most motorists usually begin to fill with dread during the last weeks of August to early September, and with good reason – the arrival of autumn means not only possible storms, but also the start of the scholastic year for the 50,000-odd students and traffic gridlock because of school transport.

Term time translates into daily traffic jams from around seven in the morning as parents taking their children to school compete with employees on their way to work.

It is bad news for all concerned, not least for the students whose education is suffering for it.

“Students arriving late due to traffic is a common occurrence,” says Janice, a primary school teacher.

She is careful to point out that the increasing number of cars on the road is not just a problem for parents.

“Getting to work is always a struggle. I have to be up at six to get to school before my students, because what used to be a 20 minute journey from Msida to my school in Mgarr now takes closer to 45 minutes,” she said.

She appealed to parents to car pool more, but feels that other factors don’t help with morning traffic jams. “For example, why can’t major roadworks be carried out in summer and not winter?” she wonders.

Daniela, also a teacher, says she considers herself fortunate for happening to live close to her workplace in Kappara. “My daily commute is very short, but I have friends from the South of the island who spend over an hour to get to work every day.”

She thinks that better coordination and training for the police officers who direct traffic is needed. “It sounds counter-intuitive, but whenever I see a policeman next to a roundabout, there is a traffic jam and whenever there are none, the traffic flows much more smoothly.”

 “Everyone is experiencing delays due to traffic,” agrees Marco Bonnici, senior vice-president of the MUT, who believes this is attributable to an increasing trend in parents driving their children to school, rather than have them use school transport.

“They are opting for this mostly due to concerns on the part of parents regarding supervision and aggressive driving. Also, government schools do not organise supervision on school buses and the schools that do, charge parents for the service.”

Has the government approached his union for input into devising a solution? Bonnici says that although the government had floated proposing a “student pass” for public transport at the beginning of the legislature, nothing has been heard since.

One measure he says would mitigate school traffic is, funnily enough, already available in the form of the government-organised “Breakfast Club” for state primary schools. He blames the low uptake of this measure to the patchy supervision coverage for pupils on these buses. Not all bus routes have teachers.

“I think we need to address the issue of supervision on school transport first, by offering an attractive package to those who would be doing the supervising,” is Bonnici’s vision of the way forward.

Bonnici’s view is shared by Donatella, a mother of two from Bidnija. “Many parents at my children’s school don’t trust the minibus drivers, preferring to drive them to school themselves,” she told this newspaper.

Asked if perhaps it would be better to shift school hours by an hour, she said that she does not think so. “School buses already pick up children very early,” she said, so much so that she has taken to dropping her two girls off at school on her way to work.

Not including the school run, she says her daily commute to San Gwann takes 45 minutes on average.

“By 7:45 the Mgarr road is already at a standstill, meaning that I have no option but to take a long detour. Even then, I still find traffic and sometimes arrive late for work.”

With a story like this, the recent news that the minister for transport is proposing all manner of alternative public transport projects, including light rail and underground transport, should come as a great relief.

Indeed it did.

Donatella welcomed the proposed public transport reform, commenting that as long as the resulting system is well-planned and reliable, she would gladly use it. This begs the question of why she doesn’t use public transport already.

“Unfortunately, the closest bus stop to where I live is a 20 minute walk away which is rather impractical.

“What I need is a helicopter,” she laughs, echoing a thought that has crossed the mind of many motorists stuck in traffic. “God forbid this transport reform doesn’t happen.”