Dhaka needs a city school bus service, now!

8:45 AM

As I frantically looked at my watch to realise I was 35 minutes late for school, I cursed at the horrible Shahbagh traffic. To me, it was no less than an obnoxious, stubborn monster – one which I had to slay every morning.

In fact, it is not just me who has such sentiments about Dhaka's crippling traffic, but rather thousands of school going students face similar adversities.

However, a solution has been proposed, one which is considered by many to be the light at the end of the tunnel – a city school bus service. This service is expected to reduce the number of school-bound private vehicles and thus decrease traffic during school hours. To make a transport service such as this successful, it has to be better than the private transport being currently used. It has to incentivise parents and students to ditch private transport for public transport service.

One way to ensure this is to make sure that the city school bus service is safe. Parents are extremely sceptical of the safety of public transportation as they often operate using questionable practices, including using unfit vehicles and hiring unqualified drivers. Such practices have resulted in multiple fatalities over the years, eroding most parents' trust in public bus services.

Thus, authorities need to strictly regulate these services, making sure that proper safety regulations are being followed. Students need to be safely dropped off and picked from designated bus stops. Experienced drivers have to be hired for such a service and malpractices, such as dropping students off a moving bus has to be prevented.

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The bus service has to be cheaper than private transport, so that a majority of students can afford it. Subsidising such a service can mean lower fares for students. There also has to be a chart regarding the fares of the bus routes to ensure that the bus conductors are not charging students extra money. Convenient ticketing services like yearly or monthly passes should be offered as well.

Additionally, these buses have to be exclusively used for students and not for regular fare collection. Once a bus is done for the day, it has to return to the bus depot to ensure proper maintenance. This is to ensure that these buses remain clean, with functional machinery and undamaged seats. A lot of students simply choose to opt for private transport, because they are much more comfortable than public transport services. Making sure that the buses are properly maintained and not overcrowded will mean that they are comfortable enough for students to use.

Public buses often tend to wait needlessly for passengers, causing a lot of unnecessary waste of time. However, such school buses will have to be punctual and only stop for a fixed period of time. Data from schools and colleges have to be used to chart routes which provide maximum coverage to students, while being efficient at the same time.

Like most development plans, the benefits of such a city school bus system can only be realised through proper implementation. If executed properly, such a service can go a long way in easing the woes of school students in the capital.

Hrishik thinks he is growing up to be a disappointing student. See him crying over his Chemistry lessons at hrdibbo@gmail.com