Today it was published in news papers that our Commissioner has requested all the schools to start at 8:30 am to beat the traffic.
Why school children be made victim for traffic for the offense created by elders? Most of the IT companies start at 8:15 - 9:00 range. Having school children traffic at the same time will cause more problem than at say 9:30 or 10:30.
Second question is many kids wake up late at around 7:00 - 8:00 am that too in the winter even adults cannot wake up early. Having school at 8:30, kids have to wake up between 6:30 to 7:00. It is so difficult for them. Also, kids apart from the very riches will go in school bus / cycle / walk. Why to take away their sleep?
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We are just lazy
Early to bed, early to rise... I have been looking for an excuse to get my son up early... the peak traffic right now is past 9:30... this move will spread it out more as those parents who will drop & go to work will leave a little earlier. More productivity at the office also if you ask me with people showing up earlier. Cold is never an excuse for starting late. Even today kids in Delhi are out of the house @ 6AM in the foggy winter morning. Many years ago in a different country I used to leave for work at 5AM in snowy blizardy weather.
Early to bed and early to raise
I agree with @idontspam. 6:30 am is not too early for a kid to be woken up. When I was a kid, my school used to start at 7:15 am which meant I had to wake up before/at 6 am. And I think for kids over 6-7 years, waking up before 7 is a good habit.
Also in cases where both parents work, this timing works well, since parents cant leave for work till they see off kids to school. With early school timings kids would start by 8, so that parents too can leave early to office and in most cases mean they return early from office.
Wish BMTC would advance their
Wish BMTC would advance their bus timings once such a decision is made!!
I usually start early to office, so as to avoid traffic.. I used to go by the earliest office cab available..
My current office does not have a cab, and I depend solely on BMTC buses.. earliest bus i can take is after 7.40am. And if I want to get a volvo, it is 7.55am.
If we want to spread out the traffic over time, infrastructure support is also essential...
Starting early to work and
Starting early to work and leaving early (if possible) is a great idea, I tried it and convinced my colleagues and thankfully we have a relatively a flexible schedule and this works well (Less traffic, buses not crowded, less stress etc). Yes, BMTC's support is also needed to make it a success(I have noticed in many important routes buses start only after 8 AM).
In the same lines, I list out a few suggestions.
1) Let govt offices, banks etc who relatively work on fixed timings shift their working hours so that they start early and leave early, we cannot always expect the pvt sector to follow suit since they have their own constraints. Many IT cos have shifts, meetings at odd hours and non-standard timings.
2) Can all educations institutions have a compulsory 5 day week? Atleast I feel school kids will be happy to have a 2 day break, they can work 30 minutes extra the other days. We save on fuel , pollution and reduced traffic on saturdays.
Most points that we discuss above can greatly reduce traffic and chaos on the roads without expenditure of a penny.