Auckland Transport says more than half Auckland's 260,000 school kids make the school run by car. Between 2006 and 2010, 57 per cent of primary and intermediate kids were chauffeured back and forth, the percentage dropping slightly to 54 per cent in 2011. By secondary school, a majority of kids had managed to cut the apron strings, but between 2006 and 2010, still 32 per cent depended on their parents for rides, the figure rising to 36 per cent in 2011.
The school run totals about 5 per cent of overall traffic volume, not a huge amount, but enough "cholesterol" in the wrong places to trigger the arterial blockages that slow Auckland traffic for hours at a time.
But instead of turning their minds to ways of weaning our school kids out of the family car and solving the congestion problem, the politicians prefer to dream impossible dreams about extracting billions of dollars of extra cash from our pockets to fund more tracks of tarmac across the Auckland isthmus.
It's true that Auckland Transport, in partnership with the New Zealand Transport Agency, Ministry of Health and the police, launched in 2005 a programme called Travelwise to persuade education facilities and workplaces "to make it easier for people to use sustainable and active modes of transport".
By 2011, a review of Travelwise claimed it had managed to take 12,271 car trips off the road each morning peak. Which is hardly a huge success, given the programme had signed up organisations and schools catering for 226,250 employees and students. Of the morning car trips removed, the school run was reduced by 6251 in 2011 and 9104 in 2012.
The biggest contributor to this reduction was the Walking School Bus programme, which at March 2012 had 264 active walking buses involving 157 schools, 2186 kids and 948 volunteer minders. Walking buses consist of volunteers walking a set route each morning, with kids joining the "bus" as it passes their home. Of course every bit helps, but what Auckland Transport can't deal with, but some brave politician should, is the key issue of school zoning - or more to the point, the weakness of the system.
If kids in the public school system were forced to attend their nearest local school instead of being allowed to shop around town for the year's "in" public school, walking or cycling or catching a local bus would become a viable option for many, and the streets might quickly free up.
Former Labour Party president Mike Williams studied the link between the school run and Auckland traffic congestion while a director of Transit New Zealand.
"What jumped out was there was no congestion during school holidays," he told the Herald on Sunday recently.
"The behaviour of parents who eschew their local school to send their kids to a more distant one is widespread and leads to loss of productivity, pollution and - to stretch the bow - an increase in obesity."
Williams pointed out that "I always went to the closest state school as a kid, and my kids and grandchildren did and do the same. We've all got tertiary qualifications or are headed in that direction. Our schools, whatever decile, are pretty much of a muchness."
The experts back him up. The Education Review Office has noted that the most sought-after, highest-decile primary schools are not always the best schools.
As you stew in Monday's congestion, think about it.
