Why does the return to school paralyze the city every year?

Victor Gonzalez, a mobility expert at INTEC, analyzes how "compulsive" trips and the "Mom and Dad Taxi" phenomenon saturate our roads, and proposes solutions that go beyond widening streets.

SANTO DOMINGO – Every August, the same thing happens. The avenues of Greater Santo Domingo become congested from the early morning hours, commute times increase, and social media is flooded with complaints about the traffic jams. The explanation is usually immediate: the school year has begun.

However, that conclusion leaves out a more important question. The school calendar is known months in advance. If the city collapses every time thousands of students return to classrooms, is the problem the start of the school year or a transportation system that fails to respond to a completely predictable event?

According to Professor Víctor González, an expert in mobility at Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), the return to classes does not create traffic congestion; it puts it to the test.

“The start of the school year increases the demand for travel concentrated at the same time. It is a predictable phenomenon that highlights the limitations of the transportation system and road infrastructure,” he explained.

A demand that is concentrated in just a few hours

During the morning rush hour, approximately 70% of traffic flows toward major urban centers. The return to school intensifies this congestion as thousands of families make simultaneous trips to take their children to school before continuing on to their workplaces.

The phenomenon known as "Dad and Mom Taxi" accounts for approximately 35% of morning rush hour traffic volume, according to data shared by the specialist. Furthermore, 87.18% of trips made during that period originate from home and are primarily destined for workplaces or schools.

In Greater Santo Domingo, the National Student Transportation System (TRAE) operates 70 routes covering 817.40 kilometers and has 248 buses to transport students from public schools. However, according to Professor Víctor González, the greatest opportunity for impact lies in the private sector.

He explained that public school students are mostly not driven to school daily by their parents, while this practice is much more common among families with children attending private schools. "A system like this for private schools would have a much more significant effect on reducing congestion," he stated. In that regard, he considered that implementing a shared school transportation model for schools located in the city center could help reduce the number of vehicles entering that area simultaneously during peak hours.

According to González, this data shows that the problem is not that there are more students on the streets, but that the mobility model depends heavily on private vehicles to solve journeys that occur practically at the same time.

The average occupancy rate of private transport in Greater Santo Domingo is 1.2 people per vehicle, while private cars account for 42% of the total travel demand.

“When most people use a vehicle to transport one or two people and everyone needs to travel at the same time, the system quickly reaches its limit,” he points out.

Measures that can be applied from now on

Although transforming the system requires long-term investment and planning, the specialist believes there are measures that can reduce pressure during the start of the school year.

These include staggering entry times at educational centers and institutions, promoting carpooling among families and communities, and strengthening safe and efficient collective school transport systems.

These actions would allow for a better distribution of travel demand and reduce the number of vehicles circulating simultaneously during peak congestion hours.

For González, widening streets or building more lanes will not by itself solve a problem associated with the way the population moves.

The expert suggests that the solution lies in strengthening mass public transportation, formalizing the public transportation system, renewing vehicle fleets, and developing policies that reduce dependence on private cars.

Each start of the school year serves as a stress test for mobility in Greater Santo Domingo. Rather than blaming students for the congestion, the return to classes reveals the need to build a system capable of responding to a phenomenon that occurs every year and whose timing has never been a surprise.