Roads to school still unsafe

Roads to school still unsafe
BY S.M. SHASHI PRASAD
BENGALURU








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: The ‘Safe Road To School’ programme has gone down a dead-end street.

The programme, initiated by the city traffic police in 2003, was meant to discourage parents from bringing four-wheelers to schools to drop or pick up their wards, and thereby decongest traffic in the heart of the city during peak hours and reduce the risk of accidents to schoolchildren. When it was introduced, private vehicles parked outside the stipulated 200-metre radius from schools located in the city centre. BMTC buses parked outside the schools to drop off and pick up children.

The then chief of police, Mr S. Mariswamy, had also proposed that schools located in the heart of the city open between 7.30 am and 2 pm, so that school timings would not clash with peak traffic hours.

But the effort seems to have gone in vain, and cars, vans, autorickshaws and buses now park right outside schools, causing traffic snarls and utter chaos on Richmond Road, Residency Road, Vittal Mallya Road, St Mark’s Road and other key links in the area.

A former senior police official, Mr K.C. Ramamurthy, says the programme was a great initiative and crucial to the free flow of traffic but failed due to flaws in implementation. The traffic department later discussed the matter with all parties concerned, including BMTC and school officials in an attempt to revive the programme after refining its modalities and approach.

However, police officials maintain that the traffic problems in the area are not related to parking outside schools or failure to implement the Safe Road to School programme.

“Congestion at the Richmond Circle flyover has nothing to do with the schools located on the road,” said additional commissioner of police (traffic and security) Praveen Sood. “We deploy adequate traffic policemen and they manage the traffic in the vicinity of the schools. The policemen are there outside school in the morning and afternoon. Safe Road to School is being implemented to the extent possible.” However, traffic experts feel that the vehicles should park inside the school premises. “Safe Road to School, if properly implemented, will definitely ease traffic congestion. The traffic policemen deployed outside the schools should monitor the parking and those who break the rules should be fined,” said Mr M.N. Sreehari, a traffic expert.

“Earlier, most schools opened only after 9 am,” a teacher said. “The timings were advanced by half an hour but that never really helped. Traffic still moves at snail’s pace in front of schools with scores of vehicles parked outside.” One of the main reasons that the programme failed was that several parents and most autorickshaw drivers were against it. Even though as many as 16 schools in the city centre and 50 schools across Bengaluru were convinced to be a part of it, Safe Road to School appears now to be a scheme well intentioned but largely forgotten.