LAHORE: City Traffic Officer Lahore Syed Abdul Raheem Shirazi has visited various areas of the city and reviewed traffic arrangements at a number of thoroughfares and intersections.
The CTO also inspected traffic flow and arrangements around schools and colleges.
Syed Abdul Raheem Shirazi visited Sahafi Colony, the Sahafi underpass and various crossings on Canal Road. A detailed review of traffic arrangements was carried out at the underpass in front of Sahafi Colony.
DSP Mughalpura Aqeel briefed the City Traffic Officer on traffic arrangements at the location.
The CTO issued necessary directions to field officers to ensure the smooth flow of traffic and to provide maximum facilitation to citizens.
He ordered all DSPs to be present in the field without exception during school opening and closing hours.
Related: Lahore Traffic Update: Challan Defaulters to Lose Excise and Khidmat Markaz Services
The City Traffic Officer directed that no senior officer should sit in an office during peak hours, and should instead ensure their position at important intersections and thoroughfares.
The instruction targeting school hours addresses the sharpest predictable congestion event in the city’s daily cycle. School opening and closing produce a concentrated surge of vehicles at fixed times at hundreds of points across Lahore, layered onto the ordinary morning and evening commute.
The safety dimension is more serious than the congestion. Children crossing roads around schools, double-parked collection vehicles reducing carriageway width, and reversing manoeuvres in constrained spaces combine to make school gates among the highest-risk locations in the urban network.
Physical presence of supervisory officers at these points, rather than reliance on wardens alone, is intended to shorten the response time on obstruction and to make enforcement visible where it has the greatest deterrent effect.
The direction that senior officers should not remain in offices during peak hours reflects a supervision problem common to traffic management. Deployment plans are drawn up centrally, but their execution depends on wardens actually occupying assigned positions at assigned times — something that cannot be verified from a control room alone, even with camera coverage.
Field presence of DSP-rank officers serves a dual function: it verifies deployment and it provides on-the-spot authority to redirect resources when conditions change.
The choice of Canal Road for detailed inspection is consistent with its status as one of the city’s principal north-south arteries and the density of educational institutions along its length. The corridor was also the site of a recent collision in which a truck driver had to be cut free from his vehicle near Aitchison College.
City Traffic Police in Lahore have simultaneously expanded electronic enforcement, with challan defaults now linked to access for excise and Khidmat Markaz services.
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