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The congestion on roads, especially during peak hours, poses a real challenge. This is becoming more serious with school traffic and a record number of vehicles plying on the roads during the morning and afternoon office hours in the short span of time.
Isa Town adjacent to Educational Area, University of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Highway to and from Seef, Manama, bridge between Busaiteen and Manama and Mina Salman bridge between Manama and Muharraq are a few main traffic chocking points which adds to the ordeal of commuters.
Let us break down each area and look at workable solutions for controlling the growing menace on the roads, through practical and doable steps without adding an additional burden on the concerned authorities who are doing their best to keep the traffic moving.
Primarily, a well functional public transport system providing an efficient, compatible, reliable solution for commuters every day is the best answer. The good news is that the kingdom has already embarked on the first phase of the flagship Bahrain Metro Project, which will take time until finished and seen as a medium to long term solution.
While short-term solution lies in the smart handling of the traffic flow, such as limiting time of school buses, as what happens thousands of buses and school vans adds a tumultuous task to the authorities to keep the traffic moving and one of the most common practice is to handle the traffic manually by traffic police officers at major junctions and main roads leading to and from the Educational Area in Isa Town, for example, in the morning and the afternoon.
But if the school managements are directed to hold the vehicles in or around their premises, as all schools have huge parking lots for their respective transport, for an hour after dropping off, it would 100 per cent ease the traffic flow, at least in the adjacent areas of Educational Area, as well as the highways across the kingdom during working days of the week.
Secondly, there should be a reward and punishment system for drivers to rein in reckless drivers and adherence to the yellow box laws as violation of yellow box laws is one of the key areas and there should be hefty fines for violators, as well as zero tolerance to private and public transport at various school drop off areas.
Last but not least, the concerned authorities should encourage schools to deploy and monitor dedicated fleets of transport to avoid mushrooming of private transport and ghost taxi systems, as in many cases, parents have no choice but to rely on any possible available mode of transport for their children.
Also, a proposal linking the validity of driving licences to residency permits, seems to be a counter-productive suggestion, as it will add an additional layer of burden on authorities while it may not be helpful in easing traffic flow on the roads, and also it is not compatible move as across the GCC has five years validity for driving licences, like that in Bahrain.
Mahmood Rafique
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