Does School Carpooling Pay Off? Propensity Score Evidence on Household Cost, Time, and Stress from Private Schools in Lahore and Faisalabad

Abstract

School drop-off and pick-up trips concentrate low occupancy private car travel within peak periods, imposing monetary, time, and psychological burdens on households. This study estimates the household level effects of regular, parent organized school carpooling among families of children attending elite private schools in Lahore and Faisalabad, Pakistan. Drawing on survey data from 937 parents across 52 schools, the analysis compares 106 carpooling households with 456 households relying on solo private car travel. Propensity score matching on the propensity logit, with 1:1 nearest neighbour matching without replacement, a 0.20 standard deviation calliper, and exact matching on city, yielded 85 matched pairs; inference uses two-way school clustered standard errors, Holm-adjusted p-values, and Rosenbaum bounds. Carpooling adoption is associated with a reduction of PKR 4,339 in monthly school travel expenditure (a 51.8% saving), a 0.57-point reduction in traffic related stress (four-fifths of a standard deviation), and 5.6 fewer parental driving days per month. The child's one-way travel time increases by approximately 5.5 minutes, and total monthly parental driving minutes remain statistically unchanged. Adoption is driven primarily by home school distance, dual earner status, and school level carpool readiness. The findings indicate that school facilitated carpooling delivers substantial cost and stress relief while reducing the frequency of parental escort obligations, supporting low cost, school-based coordination measures as a sustainable travel demand management strategy for urban Pakistan.

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