How to broach this school run traffic problem

[JenniferBooth]

i live opposite an infant/junior school. For the last 29 years. The traffic is a nightmare. Has been steadily getting worse over the last five years particularly the last two. Todays normally ten min bus journey at 3.30pm took TWENTY FIVE minutes. The bus driver could see that the three cars in front of him had ONE parent and ONE child in it. Ludicrous. Been living here 29 years and it never used to be like this. Im going to ring the Head and ask him if he can ask the parents to carpool or something. But ive already been told this is a stupid idea so what do i do.

Just another stick to beat working mothers with

I think the main issue is public transport doesn’t seem regular enough so parents drive to collect their children.
Some schools haven’t started breakfast clubs again as they don’t want to pay staffing for that extra time.

My school was awful for parking, the car park would be a standstill and so would all surrounding schools. The locals started contacting the police and reporting dangerous parking and then the council for the traffic flow.

Our school has now implemented an active tracker to school. We encourage children to walk, park elsewhere and stride, get a bus or to scoot/cycle to school. It’s then recorded how the children travel and every 6 weeks they get a reward. Management now stand in the car park monitoring the traffic situation. It’s still incredibly busy as it’s a big school but the traffic flows much better.

Contact the school again and report the problem and ask what the schools next steps are for managing it. They may or may not reply but if they have lots of complaints then they will try action something.

It's the same at all schools, you just have to allow more time to pass them. I can use two different routes to work, one takes me psst 3 schools, one takes me just past one school.
If I need to be in for 9am term time it's 10 minutes quicker to use the route with just one school.
And that's after I've driven my one child to school in my car and dropped them on the way.

Because the income doesn't cover the costs, fewer parents can afford things and since Brexit it is harder to get staff.

The people running the school/clubs, the parents and you yourself are all in the same boat - things have got worse for everyone.

You're pitching the school community as the enemy here, but both you and they are just trying to keep the plates spinning whilst the government dismantles things around us.

I'm sure the road has other roads off it, unless you all live on a giant roundabout with no escape. So the parents will be peeling off.

As well as phoning school you could also phone the bus company and ask them to change the time of the bus.

Yep unfortunately that’s just how things are. I’ve already flexed my hours to start later so I can drop off at school start time, but walking would make me late or mean I have to stay even later so I drive.

We couldn’t car pool because of car seats and heading off to work afterwards.

In reality most people are not going to inconvenience themselves regularly to ‘help’ faceless ‘society’

Nobody is going to car pool. The teachers can’t make parents do it. If people are legally using the road and legally parking there’s nothing you can do.

The majority children in our class that are driven, it's because parents are going straight to work.

I expect some of them would prefer their children walk, but they'd have to get them up much earlier and pay for breakfast club to allow time to go back for the car and make it to work.

I think we've got stricter about child safety in terms of carseats and not letting children walk to school without an adult but the infrastructure of schools is what it always was. I can't imagine these parents are sitting in that traffic for fun, they don't have a better option.

You can get wall brackets

What exactly do you expect will happen? All the parents are sat in the traffic too. It isn't for fun. People have to drop kids and go straight to work. Your only solution is an earlier or later bus.

The OP’s concern is at pick up time. Why are so many people talking about drop offs and breakfast clubs?!

We have to use the car. DD goes to breakfast club but I have to drive her the embarrassingly short distance to the school because I don’t have time to walk her and then get back home to get my car and get to work on time. I also work in a school so no flexibility in start time. As we’re early there’s no traffic issue. I understand how frustrating it is though as I live next to a different school and it’s awful at usual pick up and drop off time. It rarely affects me as I’m at work but DP does shift work and often gets caught out with it. He often gets abuse from parents who park across our drive and refuse to move.

Its a 40 min walk to my daughters school, so to be in work for 9.00 is an impossibility for me if we were to walk. Even if I put her in breakfast club which starts at 8 we would have to leave at 7.15 and then I wild be back home approx 8.40-8.45 to then drive past the school to get to work and I would probably not make it on time as its a 20 min drive.

Its a different world now with both parents working, it is hard enough trying to do everything as it is without adding on 160 minutes to the day with walking to school. I can do a lot more in the 2 hours 40 mins I would waste walking.

The council can sort this out.

We have a school street which bans private cars at drop off and pick up.

It does work.

I refuse to believe that every single parent doing this, is a heart surgeon who needs to rush to a hospital 35 miles away after pick up.

Most of them will be heading to an office or shop two or three miles away. Lazy buggers.

Talk to your council.

If there is anyway to get a bike yourself look into it- they can be stored vertically or even on the ceiling (make a feature of it?)

Options:
1 move
2 walk
3 get a different bus

Agree with @MrsTerryPratchett we physically can walk to nursery / primary school but it’s 1.5-2 miles each way and we have to work.

...and if drop off is at 8.30 and the office is 3 miles away then assuming a standard 9 am start, walking will make them late to work.

I have no skin in this game - don't live near a school, don't do a school run and WFH - but even I can see that it's more likely to be logistics than laziness.

@MendedDrum

Our drop off is 8:40. I get to the office 3 miles away for 9 on a bike.

You don't actually physically need a tonne of metal to move your body three miles at a reasonable speed. The car industry have just convinced you that you do.

Rain coats and deodorant exist.

Every single parking where not permitted, report.
Every single bad parking, perhaps report to DVLA that they are medically unfit to drive.
Any instance where there is a child not properly in their seat belt, or getting out of a car into the road, report to the school as a risk of injury.

Car pooling can work for adults, but for children won't. Given that 25% of those with a licence are unable to drive adequately, would you let another parent give your child a lift?

And yes, talk to the Council about traffic restrictions.

@MendedDrum laziness and just not getting up a few minutes earlier is a large factor. About a third of journeys to school by car then have the parent return home (possibly more now with wfh).

Quite honestly OP you just have to learn to live with it. Nothing will change. I've been involved in the school run, worked in a school,or been a governor for 25 years. I've seen hours and hours and lots of money spent on travel plans, council and police involved, headteachers naming and shaming, walking bus and various initiatives, and the problem just gets worse.

Look, I walk an hour round trip to take my child to nursery instead of driving, which would take 15 minutes. I last drove a car in, I think, January, because I'm personally committed to active and sustainable transport. Until I started WFH I cycle commuted my whole adult life. I'm a passionate cyclist, paid-up member of Sustrans, take cycle touring holidays etc etc.

And yet, there are vast swathes of this country that I wouldn't dare to cycle with my child on my bike. Plenty that I won't cycle without my child, come to that. I have the luxury (money, flexible job) of being able to arrange my life to avoid car use but I can understand that other people don't.

By all means campaign for better solutions on a systemic level, but deriding people for laziness when the whole system is working against them is unfair, unkind and unproductive.

You only have to look at the decrease in traffic during the holidays to see that a huge amount is school run mums and dads.
The area around the school I worked in was complete chaos and they had to start getting staff to man the roads- though I was always wary of the legal implications of this if there was an accident- because of the amount of incidents every day with parents stopping on the zig zags, blocking driveways and having stand offs with the local residents.

I wouldn’t live by a school for this reason. Absolute bedlam!

Lots of people who need to drive to school because of time.

Lots of people wasting lots of time held up by lots of people driving to school.

It's quite "tragedy of the commons". I wish we could magically flip society and use bikes as our most main mode of transport instead of cars. I'm picturing lots of families zipping around on cargo bikes and long tail bikes with older kids safely cycling on secure cycle routes. No jams, far less space needed, far safer, no pollution. But no, cars is what we've got, and cars make cycling scary, so cars is how it'll stay.

You'll just have to move somewhere with no schools if it really bugs you