The Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) and school managements across the city have gotten into a tussle over traffic problems caused by school buses parked on roads near schools.
Over 800 schools have been served notices by the police. While BTP has ordered that schools, which do not have ample parking spaces for their buses as well as parents’ vehicles should hire other spaces for the same, the school authorities say that implementing this will not be feasible.
The notices come in the backdrop of a series of complaints by the public about traffic congestion near school zones, occupation of footpaths by school buses, harassment by school bus drivers, and the threat to the safety of schoolchildren as well as other pedestrians. A lot of people also took to social media to report such problems, especially from around Residency Road.
School managements, which have no space for parking on their premises, have been asked to hire private security guards to manage the movement of buses as well as parents’ vehicles between the external parking space and the school. “Parents should be allowed to enter the school campus while picking up their children so that the traffic on road reduces,” a senior official of BTP said.
The school authorities argue that the notices are not fair as apart from some schools, which have 50–100 buses, the others do not cause any kind of inconvenience to traffic movement.
“This problem mostly exists in the Central Business District (CBD) where there are several big schools who have around 100 buses each. The schools in much less busier areas, where even the number of students is fewer, traffic problems do not exist. As primary stakeholders in the matter, we were not even consulted before sending us notices. This is plain harassment,” said D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements’ of Primary and Secondary Schools.
Rising complaints
BTP officials say this is not a sudden move, but a problem which has been around for years. “We have received a lot of complaints from the public. Residents of Indiranagar and surrounding areas say that school buses arrive in the morning and stay parked in the residential areas until the let-off time. Not just these areas, we have also received complaints from people living in areas such as Bagalur and Kodigehalli about the inconvenience caused by school buses. We have served notices to only those schools that are actually causing problems. We have no issues with others,” said B.R. Ravikanthe Gowda, Joint Commissioner (Traffic).
“Especially within the CBD, there are paid parking spaces. They can park their vehicles there and safely walk children to the school and back as they cannot take their vehicles till the footpaths near schools,” he said.
When asked about the enforcement against rash driving of school vehicles, he said that training and awareness programmes are being conducted year after year, but school managements should also insist that the drivers follow the rules.
“Most of us will be in a hurry while picking and dropping our children, especially in the morning hours. It is true that without regulation of the movement of vehicles and the never-ending trail of school buses, we waste at least 15 minutes of our time. Schools and the enforcement officers should reach a consensus and work out a solution for this problem. Some free parking spaces should be built in school zones for the public benefit”, said Sushma R., a parent who drops off her daughter in CBD.
