Schools create traffic jams in Hyderabad

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Hyderabad: As schools reopened last month, chaos reigned on city roads and lanes where schools are situated. Localities having a high concentration of schools such as Abids, Secunderabad, Dilsukhnagar, Habsiguda etc. are particularly affected.
Cars, scooters and autos transporting the children often park illegally right on the road itself in the absence of proper alighting points near the schools.
There are more than 3,000 schools in the city but according to the transport department, there are just 1,400 school buses plying in city limits. This translates to many bottlenecks in the city. With hundreds of schools unwilling to invest in school buses, students depend on private transport or autorickshaws to ferry them back and forth, increasing the number of vehicles choking the roads in the morning and evening.
Regulating traffic near schools poses a challenge for the traffic police. Not just schools but private coaching institutes in areas such as Ameerpet, Dilsukhnagar, Himayathnagar etc. see the same traffic holdups. Ameerpet and SR Nagar get especially affected with hundreds of students commuting daily.
The only solution suggested is provisions for parking and alighting points by schools. But the location of schools, new ones particularly, is also to blame.  The lack of planning affects the general commuting public, the vehicles that carry the children, and the children themselves who are at risk because of the chaos that prevails around the school.
Most city schools do not provide parking space
The AP Building Rules mandate that schools must provide parking space of 30 per cent of the total built-up area in line with residential complexes, but an overwhelming number of schools violate this rule with impunity.
Schools are granted recognition by the government even when they violate clear-cut rules on the provision of parking spaces and playgrounds.The relaxation in these rules is purportedly in the ‘interests of the public.’ As education has become a commercial activity, schools are mushrooming in every locality irrespective of whether they are needed or not.
S. Srinivasa Reddy, president of the AP Secondary Schools Association, said, “There are several rules and prerequisites that schools need to satisfy before being recognised, but everything is ignored using an ‘interest of public’ clause in the same rules.”
The government should conduct surveys and then call for applications to establish educational institutions based on need. That procedure is blatantly ignored.
Traffic is often the last thing schools worry about. “We have conveyed this (heavy traffic) to school managements several times but nothing is done,” a traffic police official told this newspaper.
Since the school cannot provide parking after it is established, the real culprit is the government department that allows the school to be set up even though the school has not met infrastructure requirements.