LAHORE: Additional traffic staff have been deployed on Lahore’s main arteries to keep traffic moving during school hours and spare citizens the daily congestion that builds around opening and closing times, the city traffic administration has announced.
The Chief Traffic Officer Lahore has directed circle officers to remain personally present in the field during school opening and dispersal hours. Wardens have been posted outside more than 200 schools located on busy and important roads, while 100 additional traffic response units and patrolling officers have been placed on the city’s main thoroughfares.
Extra staff have been deployed on The Mall, Jail Road, Ferozepur Road and Main Boulevard Gulberg, as well as on Iqbal Town Road, Wahdat Road, Maulana Shaukat Ali Road and Canal Road — the corridors that carry the heaviest volumes during morning and afternoon peaks.
The CTO has also instructed circle officers to hold meetings with school and college administrations, a step aimed at aligning institutional dispersal timings and pick-up arrangements with the traffic plan. Orders have been issued for action against double-lane parking outside schools and colleges, and against handcarts and vendor stalls that narrow the carriageway at precisely the hours when the flow is heaviest.
Double parking outside educational institutions is a long-standing pressure point in Lahore. Vehicles waiting for children routinely occupy an entire lane on roads such as Wahdat Road and Iqbal Town Road, reducing effective road width at peak times and pushing queues back into intersections.
Alongside enforcement, the traffic administration has ordered a set of longer-term measures. The Incharge Education Unit has been directed to restart the Traffic Scouts programme, under which students are trained in basic road discipline and traffic awareness and, in some cases, assist in managing movement outside their own institutions.
The Incharge Driving Schools has been directed to design a scooty training programme, reflecting the growing number of women and girls using scooters for the school and college commute in Lahore. Structured training for new scooter riders has been sought by road-safety advocates for several years, on the argument that a large share of two-wheeler casualties involves riders who have never had formal instruction.
Lahore Traffic Police operate through a circle-based structure, with circle officers responsible for defined territorial units of the city. Directing those officers into the field during school hours shifts supervision from control rooms to the roadside, a step traffic managers have used previously during Ramazan timings, examination seasons and major public events.
The administration has not announced how long the additional deployment will continue or whether it will be reviewed once the current academic term settles into routine.
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