How school holidays really affect traffic times

Traffic on the Southern Motorway. Photo / Natalie Slade

Aucklanders finding clearer roads to work during the school holidays enjoyed travel savings of up to 36 per cent, but commuter travel logs showed some perverse results.

A minority among 14 commuters invited by the Weekend Herald to fill in trip diaries for the past fortnight - straddling the second week of the school holidays and the first week of the spring term - reported some longer travel times.

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Some, such as web-designer Pavan Prasad, blamed it on limited motorway capacity but suggested that shopping and working hours as well as school holidays be staggered rather than building more roads.

Mr Prasad took an average 40 per cent longer to drive out of the city last week than since school started back on Monday, although his wife Harshika enjoyed modest time savings of about 6 per cent on her trips from the couple's Mangere home to work in East Tamaki.

Rebecca Fletcher of Te Atatu South relished an average savings of 36 per cent on her road trips last week from Te Atatu South to her job at a downtown Auckland bank, and child-care worker Daniele Oliveira reported 35 per cent faster times from Mission Bay to Remuera.

Freight industry specialists Nicolas Zubok and Ben Mogford reported savings of 33 per cent and 27 per cent respectively driving to their jobs at Auckland Airport from eastern suburb homes.

Mr Mogford said it has been "murder" trying to get to work this week from Howick, when his average travel time stretched back out to 49 minutes compared with school holiday runs ranging from 33 to 39 minutes.

His worst crawls were on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, when long delays on the Southwestern Motorway and feeder roads dragged out the times in his car to 62 minutes and 67 minutes respectively.

But Mr Zubock reported a "totally unexpected" fast run home to Mission Bay on Monday afternoon of just 37 minutes compared with an hour-long haul to his job at Mondiale Freight the next morning.

Bus passengers Jasmine Teina and Linda Forsman reported faster runs in both directions between Mt Roskill and central Auckland, although their concerns about buses turning up late to collect them for work persisted through the school holidays.

Ms Teina had a particularly vexing ride to work on Tuesday, when her bus arrived eight minutes late at the South Roskill shops and then took 67 minutes to reach Albert St, after a 25-minute delay at an accident site.

Northern Employers and Manufacturers' Association chief Kim Campbell said he believed the key to making Auckland's roads more efficient was to stagger both school holidays and starting times, but did not believe there would be much point in industry doing likewise.

"Schools have the biggest impact, not work, because work goes on no matter what," he said.

"It's just so obvious when holidays come along the roads free up.

"If you try to stagger the school holidays, not just them but school start times, that will make a dramatic difference."

Mr Campbell said his Remuera neighbourhood was extremely quiet over the school holidays because "I reckon the whole population were either in Fiji or Omaha.

But Mangere-Otahuhu Local Board chairman Lydia Sosene believed the holidays had less impact on traffic in her territory, where a prevalence of people having to travel between various part-time jobs kept the roads busy.

Auckland Transport estimates a general reduction of about 15 per cent of traffic on arterial roads during holidays, leading to journey time savings of up to 20 per cent, but has no figures on intra-regional difference.