School Buses

One has to see to believe the number of private cars, Suzukis and wagons stranded bumper to bumper across Peshawar Road near Westridge, Rawalpindi picking up and dropping the school kids at the opening and closing times of the schools situated there. Same is the case with the main GT Road near Sohaan bridge which is jam-packed and the traffic badly choked due to these vehicles numbering in hundreds especially the private cars which are there at the scale of one car per child!  It literally takes half an hour or so to cross these two points, which can be hazardous for emergency vehicles like an ambulance to go through this mess. And these are not the only two places creating bottlenecks for the traffic as there must be hundreds of them all over the country. And on the top of it it is a daily affair!   One wonders why can’t we have school buses like most western countries have and each bus shall replace at least 50 cars, thus eliminating the congestion on! the roads.  

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)