Much worse.

Eastbound H-1 traffic starts to back up at the University Avenue off-ramp today. Despite some rain, commutes were relatively smooth. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Take a little bit of drizzle, the typical Monday morning fender-benders and the addition of 42,000 university, community college and private school students trying to get to class on time the first day and the potential exists for a major traffic mess.

But police and transportation officials said morning peak traffic flowed relatively smoothly.

Scott Ishikawa, state Department of Transportation spokes man, said it took him perhaps 15 minutes longer than usual to travel from his Mililani home to his office on Punchbowl Street.

"The H1-H2 merge seemed a little slower than usual today and there were no accidents, so its probably the result of the increased traffic related to the start of school for the university and private schools," Ishi-kawa said.

The good news is that traffic should not get too much worse, Ishikawa said. That's because many of the public schools are already back in session. Those that have not started the school year likely will result in increased traffic on community roads but not freeways and major highways since public school students tend to go to school fairly close to home, Ishikawa said.

Police said the morning traffic was a little heavier than it had been before the resumption of college and private school. But because there were no major accidents, traffic moved about as well as could be expected.

Traffic officials are hoping commuters continue to leave early enough to get to their destination on time. There is a tendency for drivers who leave early the first day, and who arrive earlier than expected, to leave later the next day, only to find that thousands of other drivers have made the same assumption.