Every morning between 7:30-8:00, cars would end up waiting in a traffic jam at the adjacent school. We decided to think of an initiative to solve or reduce the traffic congestion.
The ideas
One of the ideas from our brainstorming session was to create a digital connection between the GPS of cars and a notice board. This project was slightly unrealistic to attain and so we decided to focus on a specific problem we face daily. We identified a traffic congestion problem that occurs every morning when students get dropped off at our school and at a neighbouring school. This is a potential high risk area as students are often crossing the road during high peak traffic hours. We decided to conduct a few interviews with respective parents and with the principal of the adjacent school.
The initiatives
After analyzing the interviews, we decided that one of the best means of reducing traffic would be for the adjacent school to employ a traffic officer to stop traffic before the pedestrian crossing and thus speed up the traffic flow. We also noticed that parents of students were parking in an already narrow road and asked for beacons to be placed warning drivers not to park during peak times. We prepared a short video to help educate and inform the parents, students and teachers of our neighbouring school of the possible dangers and alternative solutions. The headmaster of the school was inspired to also employ further staff to redirect traffic to another location.
Overall we learnt that a lot of work is entailed when liaising with different stake holders and that working as a team required shared responsibility. We feel that the joint initiative with the principal of the adjacent school has reduced the traffic congestion.
