Fifty thousand students and faculty members will head back to school Monday, leading Hawaii officials to incentivize residents to take public transportation and marking a symptom of the return to in-person education. Starting today until Aug. 26, residents can get free HOLO cards to ride TheBus free from Monday to Aug. 26, when many universities, community colleges and private schools resume.

“We do want to beat the school jam this year,” Gov. David Ige said at a Monday news conference in the Joint Traffic Management Center on King Street. “We are committed to in-person learning and certainly getting back to normal during this COVID pandemic.”

“We wanted to add a free-fare week so we can entice more people to ride on public transportation and feel the aloha spirit,” said Mayor Rick Blangiardi at the news conference. “We’re just excited for our kids that they’re going to get back to school, and we get back on with our lives.”

“This is going to be the first time that we have ever suspended our fares on the city bus system,” said Roger Morton, Honolulu transportation director.

The city is reintroducing 37 express routes for TheBus and opening a new “campus connector” route running mauka of H-1 to the University of Hawaii, then down to ‘Iolani School and Kapiolani Community College.

Oahu is home to about 25,000 private school students, some of whom already have returned to school, and others who will resume this week and next. Among those excited about the new school express route is Phillip Bossert, executive director of the Hawaii Association for Independent Schools, who called it “double savings.” “The idea of having a bus that’s downtown where the kids can get on and take them to the schools solves two problems: One, traffic going to the schools is only half of it, (and) the traffic on Beretania and Wilder going back as the parents who just dropped off their kid have to get back downtown,” Bos-sert said.

Drivers can help prevent delays by maintaining their vehicles beforehand, according to state Department of Transportation Deputy Director for Highways Ed Sniffen. “Stalls and crashes comprise over a third of the delays that everybody sees in the system,” Sniffen said. “One minute of delay because of a stall and then a crash equals six minutes of a delay for everybody else in the system.” He urged workers to telework if possible to alleviate traffic at peak times.

With more people poised to get on the road, officials warned drivers to “relax.” “We already killed 76 people in the system this year, 21 more than last year; we don’t need any more fatalities,” Sniffen said.

About 80,000 public school children, who returned to the classroom two weeks ago, live within walking distance of their schools, according to Emily Evans, student transportation services branch ad­ministrator of the state Department of Education. “So please keep the slow pace if you find yourself in localized traffic around the schools,” Evans said. “If you feel the need to press that gas and take an advantage of a gap you see, imagine a loved one walking in front of the car.”