Bangalore: The Safe Route to School (SRTS) project for students had evoked a lukewarm response as there was no coordination between schools, traffic police and BMTC. However, the increasing number of accidents involving the school buses has now forced all stakeholders to re-launch it.
Though the concept was mooted in 2005, it got a lease of life when M. A. Saleem was the Additional CommÂissioner for Police (Traffic and Internal Security).
Then a pilot scheme was launched, involving the 16 schools from the Central Business District (CBD), and the Bangalore Agenda Task Force was also roped in. But the scheme drew poor response and failed to realise its goals.
According to the traffic police, only a handful of schools in the city introduced the scheme. The guidelines included early school hours, use of BMTC buses, no entry to school bus, vans into school campus and public participation in the traffic management.
Chaya Ramanujam, a resident of Malleswaram said she gave up her job in order to ferry her children to and from school. “It was a shocker for me to witness how these school buses ply children, especially in the morning when there are not enough traffic policemen.
They jump signals, violate one-way rules, take sharp and risky turns; just to reach school on time,” she said. Chaya herself had travelled in a couple of these buses to check out how safe they were and decided against sending her six-year-old son in them.
An officer from the transport department told this newspaper that when the project was launched there were high hopes, as it offered practical solutions. “The problem is with the stakeholders.
The Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which is monitoring the schools, was not roped in while implementing the project. The traffic police were clueless over how to regulate the traffic, as parents were not ready to cooperate. The project will have to be implemented at micro level,” he said.
“After the implementation of SRTS, the Supreme Court came out with stringent guidelines for the schools vans. Even these guidelines were diluted in the city,” he said.
