Back to School Economics

Every fall as school starts, there’s a pronounced impact on rush hour traffic as patterns and volumes change to match new schedules.  Parents have to drop kids off at school at specific times and that often impacts their arrival times at work.  School busses crowd the highways and neighborhood streets.  And my 25 minute summertime commute grows to 30-35 minutes, sometimes more, as the normally fast-moving interstates and spurs turn into clogged arteries that often bring me to a full stop.

This year the crush was a little worse than last.  The usual ramp-up came right on schedule as vacations ended and secondary schools began sessions.  Two weeks later, when the universities started classes, the roads were clogged, big time, for a full week.  In past years, Monday’s and Tuesday’s were horrific, Wednesday’s a little better, and then Thursday’s and Friday’s not so bad.  Friday’s could sometimes even be light.  This is good, I thought; the economy is getting better.  There are more people on the road than in previous years and that means more people working than before.

Over the past few years, what I’ve been seeing on my local highways seems to reflect what’s going on in the national economy pretty well.  Fall 2012 traffic was worse than 2011.  2011 should have been worse than 2010, but it wasn’t – a reflection of the global economic effects of the Japanese tsunami.  But Fall 2010 traffic was a great deal worse than 2009 as the economy began to recover.  I was heartened to see a lot more traffic on the road than in 2009, a year when it seemed no one needed to go anywhere.

But even though traffic patterns this Fall were worse than last, something funny happened.  It stopped.  After about two weeks, the crush dropped dramatically.  There were only a couple of bad traffic days in the following two weeks.  In past years, this has happened much more slowly; never this fast, and never this significantly.

What does it mean?

Frankly, I’m not sure.

Have drivers simply improved their skill and are therefore causing fewer traffic-tying fender-benders?  I doubt it.  Have drivers become more proficient at finding alternatives to the busy interstates and spurs?  Perhaps, although I doubt this, too.  Are more people suddenly out of work?  That also seems unlikely; cuts substantial enough to cause this phenomenon would make the news, big time, and there has been no such news.   So what, then, is the cause?

Two remaining possibilities come to mind.  One: what if the initial two-week crush was a false signal?  What if, instead of signaling more people working, it simply signaled hopes on the part of parents and students that times were getting better and kids going back to school was the fresh start that non-working parents needed to get back out and look for work.  Maybe parents didn’t find it, and they got disheartened again and are now hunkering down to save gas and have money to pay for junior’s lunches.

Or maybe, after two weeks, students, faculty, parents, and workers quickly figured out ways to carpool.  Maybe that, along with some finding of alternate routes, led to the decrease in traffic on the major thoroughfares.

But that’s a lot of maybes.  And none really satisfy.  So, again, what’s the cause, really?  The truth is, I still don’t know.  But I’ll bet that in a few months the clouds will begin to clear on this issue.

Stay tuned.