3 city schools show way to beat traffic chaos

So, at a function on road safety on Thursday, Director General of Police Dr P S Pasricha will hear activist Indrani Malkani recount how the Malabar Hill Residents Association—Malkani is president of the association—and the traffic police created the model in 2002 and supervised its implementation at the Cathedral & John Connon School, Fort, in 2002.

The premises around Cathedral & John Connon School had such massive traffic problems that Meera Isaacs, the principal, had begun to receive angry letters complaining about the vehicles crowding the busy Fort area twice a day—once when the school began and then when it got over. Isaacs got in touch with Malkani to sort out the problem.

A meeting with the then DCP (Traffic) Himanshu Roy followed and they decided on car pools as an effective way to ferry the students to and fro. However, car pools could give rise to parking problems. “To provide an efficient, safe and secure bus service to students by eliminating the use of private vehicles as much as possible was the main aim of this model. We thought about school buses as an ideal option. The school already had 11 buses. But often, the buses would take long winding routes. Besides, there were no proper timings. So parents used their own vehicles to leave and pick up their children,” said Malkani.

The school enforced a rule, which disallowed cars in to the approach road of the school. After surveying the routes, shortlisting bus operators, inspecting the buses and completing all other logistics, 52 buses were flagged off in June 2002. As many as 94 per cent of the total number of students started using the bus service.

The success was replicated soon: Bombay International and Bombay Scottish implemented a similar system soon. At the Cathedral & John Connon School, the buses take three minutes for departure. The school has appointed bus administrators who are regularly in touch with Malkani. “Everyone would like the bus to halt at their doorstep but that is not possible. The bus cannot reach every nook and corner. But we have tried to cater to all the students,” Malkani explained.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Vijay Kamble agrees that the model has shown some success, but may face some challenges in being replicated. “The model cannot be implemented uniformly all over Mumbai. Depending on the area in which the schools are located, the implementation will vary. We will discuss this model with school principals at the function on Thursday and try to come up with a feasible solution.”