The good citizens of Thousand Oaks can feel confident and sleep well tonight, knowing that another committee will soon discuss the traffic congestion that will return in just a few weeks to every Conejo Valley school.

They’ll talk about it, all right, but actually resolving the problem is another matter.

Comedian Milton Berle once described a committee as a “group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.”

It’s easy to be sarcastic about committees. Government officials love them because committees serve a purpose— primarily as a diversionary tactic. Words similar to the following have been uttered for decades by bureaucrats and elected officials: “We weren’t sure how to solve the problem so we created another committee to thoroughly investigate it and offer possible solutions.”

Translated into actual English they’re saying, “There are no easy answers. We’re buying time so people think we’re actually doing something.”

What’s usually delivered is called lip service.

In this case, the solution is simple: we need fewer parents driving their kids to school.

It can happen several ways, including cheap, efficient bus transportation and carpooling. More kids walking or riding bikes to school would be hugely beneficial. We doubt, however, that parents will put their kids at risk by letting them walk or peddle to school (especially with all that traffic), so buses and carpools are the only logical solutions.

Imagine—if just one minivan or SUV carried six kids to school, that’s as many as five fewer vehicles in a schoolhouse traffic jam. Forty kids on a bus are even better. And bus fees could be easily offset by what we’re paying at the pump.

The committee can talk all it wants, but the only possible solution is fewer vehicle trips.

Buses and carpooling will work. And if you sleep on it tonight, you’ll get the same answer tomorrow morning—committee or no committee.