KARACHI: For students and teachers, the winter break brings a much-anticipated respite from the weekly monotony of a regular school schedule. Some families plan trips to popular destinations for much-needed recreation while others use the opportunity to catch up with their relatives residing away from the cities. Entire family clans make the most of the break, strategically planning weddings to coincide with it to maximise attendance.
What goes somewhat less noticed, however, is the respite that the winter break brings to motorists. A feature as regular as the school schedule itself in big cities like Karachi is the morning and afternoon rush hour that coincides directly with when students come in and leave their respective institutions.
As parents scramble to drop and then pick their children on time, the ill-planned nature of most schools in the city leaves many of its most vital traffic arteries choked.
Needless to say, with the school session back in full swing, motorists may be feeling as nostalgic for a winter break as those returning from vacation to a regular school session.
A growing problem
Daily traffic jams outside of schools have become a nuisance for motorists across the city. To top it all off, the problem is not confined to traffic jams alone but the lack of road safety education, together with people’s general negligence towards traffic laws, has worsened the situation.
Outside schools, motorists not only have to wait for hours for the traffic to clear but they also have to deal with minor accidents because of the lawlessness that is witnessed regularly.
Those going to offices in the morning are particularly affected due to the traffic jams outside of schools. Despite starting work at 9 AM, many have to leave their houses two to three hours before their normal timing to avoid getting stuck in traffic.
To provide pick and drop services to the students, thousands of private vans operate throughout the city, several dozens of which can be seen gathering outside of a single school building, that too in a disorganised manner, which naturally chokes the flow of traffic. Since most schools are constructed inside residential buildings, they do not have parking spaces to accommodate hundreds of vehicles that throng the school building at the same time, that too twice a day. As a result, these vehicles can be seen parked on the main road which makes it impossible for traffic to move.
The affected areas
A survey conducted by The Express Tribune revealed that over the years, different networks of private schools have branched out across the city without proper planning. Almost all private schools are situated on some of the busiest roads of Karachi, including main Sharae Faisal, Rashid Minhas Road, Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society, Clifton, Defence Housing Society, Shaheed-e-Millat Expressway, Saddar, MA Jinnah Road, Sher Shah Suri Road, Shahrah-e-Pakistan, Abul Hassan Ispahani Road, Garden, Gulberg, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad and Gulshan-e-Iqbal, among others.
The private schools most affected by traffic jams outside of their premises include BVS Parsi, Mama Parsi, St. Patrick’s High School, St. Joseph’s Convent, St. Michael’s Convent, the City School (several branches, especially the PAF Chapter), Karachi Grammar School (both campuses), Jaffar Public School, Beacon House School System, Metropolitan School, Metropolis Academy, Bahria Foundation School, Dawood Public School, several branches of the Generation School and Happy Palace School, among several others.
Since the schools are usually situated in residential bungalows, the daily traffic jams not only create a problem for passersby but also cause trouble to the residents of the area who complain of undue traffic noise and their inability to easily drive to and from the area during peak traffic hours.
Passing the buck
Despite being an ongoing problem which equally and indiscriminately affects all motorists, no one is ready to take responsibility to resolve the issue. While parents of students and their van drivers shift the blame on school authorities to control the traffic situation outside of their premises, schools hold the traffic police responsible for maintaining a smooth flow of traffic.
Moreover, none of the stakeholders has ever thought of working together to formulate a comprehensive strategy to deal with the issue.
When approached, most private schools were of the view that their administration is solely responsible for matters within the campus and not for issues related to transportation and traffic jams in the surrounding areas of schools.
An officer of the Sindh Education Department, who requested anonymity, told The Express Tribune that schools are not responsible for taking care of the traffic situation outside of their premises as per the law.
“The responsibility of controlling the traffic situation outside of schools lies with the Sindh transport department as in the past, complaints regarding CNG and LPG cylinders in school buses were also managed by the department concerned,” he said.
Shedding light on the matter, the director of Traffic Engineering Bureau Mohammad Iqbal said that the preferred solution to this long-standing problem is that schools should make some changes in their schedules.
“Frequent traffic jams during rush hours can be avoided if schools start their primary classes at 8 AM and end them at 2 PM, while secondary classes could be started at 7 AM and dismissed at 2:30 PM,” he suggested.
“The other solution is to tell drivers to park their cars on a single lane while schools should urge parents to prefer school vans over private vehicles to pick and drop their children to school. The practice of bringing one vehicle to pick and drop a single child to schools should be banned because it’s the biggest reason for traffic jams in the city.”
Deputy Director Traffic Engineering Bureau Mohammad Azim said that schools should hold road-safety training sessions for their van drivers and arrange parking lots to solve the problem permanently.
Published in The Express Tribune, By Syed Ashraf Ali / Safdar Rizwi January 20th, 2020.
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Education