I was happy to get to work in less than 25 minutes today, but I did not understand why there was no traffic at all. Only schools are off on All Saints day while all businesses and universities are open. Is it possible that schools are causing all this traffic everyday?
It doesn’t really make sense as you don’t see that many school buses from Jounieh to Beirut and most of the traffic schools cause is around the school not on the highway.
Nevertheless, if that’s the case, then the solution to everyday traffic is quite simple:
– Either let schools start an hour early or let businesses and universities start at 9 am.
Happy All Saints day to everyone!
It’s not only buses, it’s parents driving their kids to school as well
I thought of that too but most of these parents are going to work afterwards and there are not many children living in Jounieh & Mount Lebanon and going to schools in Beirut.
You’d find traffic inside Jounieh, inside Ayntoura, Achrafieh etc ..
Let’s say X Lives in Jounieh, works in Achrafieh, and has a child (Y) in Aintoura, X starts work at 9 usually, but everyday he gets to work at 8h30 because at 7h30 Y has to be in school so he just puts him in school and continue to work.
On a normal Day X doesn’t leave at 7h30 to go from Jounieh to Beirut. So he only causes traffic when Y has school. And this is how schools cause traffic 😛
Oh and btw I lived in Mount Lebanon and went to school in Achrafieh, and 4 of my neighbors did the same thing… So yes they are a lot of students living in Jounieh & Mount Lebanon and going to schools in Beirut.
Eliedh,
What needs to be done is calculate the percentage of parents who actually drop their children home and don’t send them with a bus.
Also the % of children that live in Mount Lebanon and send their kids to schools in Beirut. I doubt that the number is high except if parents work in Beirut.
Added to that, a lot of parents drop their children very early and get to work very early, so they are not part of the traffic.
Another interesting phenomenon, could anyone please explain why on tuesday/thursday there is less traffic than monday/wednesday ..i find this very weird and we always have endless debates about this at the office without ever finding a conclusion !!
Kadjoe,
Never thought of that before. It is reasonable to expect most of the traffic on Mondays cause a lot of people prefer coming back home from the mountains on Monday morning than Sunday night.
There’s also the Friday phenomenem where you would expect the most traffic on your way back from Beirut yet it is surprisingly much less than usual.
University students might prefer M W F instead of T TH. So that might be the cause of it.
To add to the confusion, only a minority of schools were closed today…