Hyderabad Traffic Police ask school managements to go for staggered timings

The plan of the Hyderabad traffic police is to ensure that no two schools in close proximity begin or end the day's functioning at the same point of time

Hyderabad: To ease traffic chaos in school zones, the Hyderabad Traffic Police have asked the school managements to go for staggered timings. The plan of the traffic police is to ensure that no two schools in close proximity begin or end the day’s functioning at the same point of time. If successfully implemented, there would be less traffic chaos which in turn would help the regular road users in the area.

The traffic police devised the plan to stagger school timings following complaints from regular commuters about traffic jams and slowdowns in areas where a large number of schools are located. People complained that despite the presence of traffic policemen, areas with multiple schools continued to have gridlocks and movement of traffic was at a snail’s pace.

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“A meeting with the school managements was held recently and almost all of them agreed to cooperate with us to minimise the inconvenience. We are hopeful that by this month-end, we will be able to ground our plans,” Additional Commissioner (Traffic), G Sudheer Babu, said.

Schools were asked to stagger the school timings by 15 minutes to ease traffic congestion. Teams of traffic policemen have already identified several areas where there are clusters of schools and traffic-related problems are regular. Depending upon the traffic flow, school strength (in terms of number of students) and number of vehicles lined up outside the schools to pick up students, the traffic police will divide the school zones into sectors and suggest the school managements opening and closing times.

The traffic police are asking the managements to allow vehicles into the schools to pick up students instead of parking outside. In some areas, there are complaints of rows of vehicles lined up in front of the school, particularly where there is no open ground to allow vehicles. “At such institutions, we are asking the management to post security guards to regulate the traffic on the road. One or two traffic policemen are also being posted,” said the official.