Administration fails to control school rush on GT Road

Rawalpindi : For the parents and drivers who drop the kids to schools located on main GT Road, it has become a nightmare for them every day to ply through the severe traffic jam which has become the norm of day.

Five days in a row, from Monday to Friday the traffic jam at the school pick up time enrages every driver plying on the GT Road in front of Defence Phase 2 and Bahria Town. The traffic worsens at the time when the schools are off around 2 pm.

Each and every person tries to switch the lanes left and right on the main Road.

The u-turns that were made to ease the traffic jams are so big that the main traffic has to squeeze in on the main road to adjust in the thin lanes left for the main road. With the influx of hundreds of cars that enter the u-turn from Bahria had to squeeze in into the main traffic which is already choked.

Every step of the school administrations as well as the traffic wardens have miserably failed due to the inefficiency to handle the severe mismanagement and the lawlessness of the traffic rules. Right after the specific u-turn from Bahria Town the cars from the extreme right have to turn to extreme left because the school is on the left and the cars coming from Rawat have to turn to the extreme right to avoid the rush of the school. So there is only one lane left for running traffic which is totally insane. The drivers leave the cars on the main roads and go to pick up the children and leave their cars stranded on the main GT Road. All the main road traffic has to squeeze in one lane which is so-called fast lane, but the traffic moves with the snail’s speed. The cars stuck in a row bumper to bumper have to go through another ordeal by dealing with the male and female beggars, who spring up automatically at the same 2 p.m. traffic jam. All the beggars take the benefit of severe traffic jams and knock at the windows of every car in a row to get any sympathy alms or charity from already frustrated drivers, as if the curse of traffic jam for hours is not enough. Picking young children from school as late as 2.45 p.m just because of traffic jams surely makes the kids and their parents go insane. This problem has been around for years and now with every school mostly coming up on main GT Road has worsened the traffic for those who are in emergency or for ambulances. Sincere efforts by the traffic authorities and the schools’ administration should work on this problem and solve the issue once and for all.

The mothers who pick their kids from school said that in order to avoid the traffic rush, they leave the house at 1 p.m. and then get stuck in the traffic and then come back home around 3 p.m. The mothers and the kids both get exhausted because of the inefficiency of traffic management.