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Autos add to chaos near school areas

Drivers linger around after dropping kids

Hyderabad: The congestion in the core city area during the afternoons is mostly due to the large presence of school autorickshaws, apart from the increasing number of other vehicles.

Though educational institutions claim that they have staggered their school closing timings, chaos prevails in areas like Hyderguda, Abids, Chirag Ali Lane, King Koti etc.

Despite the traffic police holding meetings with the school authorities, and imposing no-parking fines on the autorickshaws, the drivers keep hanging around schools long after dropping the students and before picking up others.

“The Abids and Hyderguda roads have so much traffic congestion. I have seen autorickshaw drivers chatting with each other after parking their vehicles along the road. They occupy so much of the road,” said Manish Jain, a businessman.

Traffic police are also unsuccessful in getting these stationary autorickshaws to move away from the roads leading to the schools.

Some of the autorickshaw drivers are happy just ferrying children to and from schools.

They do not to entertain other passengers or move out of the neighbourhood between the schools’ opening and closing times.

“The kids I drop finish their school by 1 pm. So, once I drop them at 9 am, I don’t go to far away places. I only take passengers who want to go within one-km radius,” said Mushtaq, an autorickshaw driver near Abids.

“It is very difficult to say for how long these autorickshaws should be allowed to linger outside the schools to reduce the traffic congestion,” said S. Siam Sunder, DCP, traffic police.

In addition to regular commuters, parents who come to drop and pick up their kids on motorcycles and four-wheelers also find it difficult to reach their kids due to the presence of the autorickshaws.

( Source : dc correspondent )
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