Use BMTC school buses to decongest traffic
By Namboodiri

They are back with their bags, their burdens; little children trudging along to school, with bags that seem heavier than them! Since the schools have just opened, they are still in the vacation mind, and you can almost see the pain in their eyes of leaving all that and going to school. What a silly idea! In the morning they are dropped off by their parents on their vehicles, or they take the BMTC route to school. Two months ago, the roads were filled with office goers rushing to office. Now, the traffic is all set to take a quantum leap, with school going children adding to the chaos. Expect more traffic snarls and holdups particularly during peak hours. Can things get worse than this?

The authorities did try to find a solution to avert this mess. There was a move to change the stagger the school and office timings, but it did not happen. Most parents were cold to the idea of starting schools at an early time and stiffly resisted any change in the timings. The move to exclusively use BMTC buses to transport children to schools also did not make much of an impact on the ground. However, the options are limited, and so the BMTC route seems the best bet under the circumstances.

The BMTC should operate from major points and some interior areas of the city where hitherto transport is far from sufficient. In fact these interior areas attract a large strength of school children, especially since residential areas of Bangalore are rooted to undeveloped areas. The Central areas of Bangalore where most top-end schools are located and where the parents use their own mode of transport to drop their wards to school, even when distances are small distances, desperately need to be decongested on a priority basis.