The first day at school is always exciting. At the Cujira school complex it was traumatic. Traffic congestion was the order of day and the area, which was created to reduce congestion in Panaji, fell victim to it. On the first day, it was a sea of students, cars and buses, all jostling for space on a one-way street and some of the vehicles spilled on to the highway. To put it plainly, it was as chaotic as a traffic jam around the Panaji bus stand. So, what went wrong? How did a plan to reduce congestion break down?
When it was first proposed, the idea of moving schools out of the city to reduce congestion seemed like a good one. About six schools and a college took up the offer and created the necessary infrastructure. The easiest part was building school infrastructure. The hard part of calculating the number of cars and buses that would be needed to transport students from the city to the schools was not done. It was assumed that everything would be okay. What happened in reality was that congestion from Panaji was transferred to Cujira forcing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to suggest staggered timings. What this essentially means is that the plan has failed and the government has to come up with another plan to rescue the first one.
Part of the problem lies with the fact that there is no ring road, which means, vehicles have to enter and exit from the same road. We have been assured by former Panaji MLA Siddarth Kunkalienkar that the government has obtained an NOC from BSNL to go ahead with construction of the road. This will definitely ease flow of traffic, but not reduce the congestion because when complete this complex will play host to nearly 6,500 students and transporting such a large body of students is a logistical nightmare.
The larger problem here, as witnessed in all cities in Goa and the world, is cars. Look at it this way: one bus occupies the space of 3.5 cars but can transport at least 60 students. Even if car-pooling was made mandatory it would take 15 cars to transport that many students. Clearly, the bus is more efficient and occupies less space. But no one wants to take the bus because it is still not convenient enough. The challenge here, as it was in Curitiba, Brazil and Bogota, Columbia, is to create a rapid bus transport system and discourage use of cars. A reduction in cars in any city, and in this case Cujira, will automatically reduce congestion and streamline transportation. The Curitiba model of elevated and rain protected bus shelters would suit this project. The government, traffic experts and architects must put their heads together to create this system so that children benefit. The good side effect of this system is that children will grow up to value public transport over private vehicles.
