The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to introduce traffic and road safety lessons for children below the age of 12 at the newly developed traffic park at Bremen chowk in Aundh.
Under the project, a model of a street – 160 meters long and four meters wide – has been created on the park with all the features of city roads, including miniature size traffic signals, signages, road crossings, speed breakers, footpaths and cycle tracks . Paintings on traffic rule awareness by noted artist Mangesh Tendulkar have been put up around the park.
The project is part of the Urban95 programme, for which the PMC has joined hands with the Netherlands-based Bernard van Leer Foundation.
“We are ready for the implementation of an initiative to educate children on traffic rules. It will begin anytime now as schools have reopened. The implementation got delayed due to the covid-19 pandemic,” said PMC executive engineer Dinkar Gojre.
“An NGO named Safe Kids Foundation has prepared a one-and-a-half-hour training session for children and is also ready with the necessary staff for its implementation,” he said.
The children visiting the traffic park will be first shown a short film on traffic rules and safety. A gaming zone has been planned on a 50-metre stretch where students can play and learn traffic rules. The PMC has procured 25 bicycles of different sizes for the children.
The Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) has assured the PMC of providing two minibuses at concession rate to the education department to ply students of civic schools to and fro from the traffic park.
“The civic education department will ply students in batches of 25 each to the traffic park for training. There will be three training sessions per day and to start with, students of the Aundh ward office area would be given training as it is the nearest one,” said an officer of the civic education department.
The PMC will charge Rs 5 entry fee for each student and teacher of civic schools and Rs 20 per student and teacher of private schools as well as the general public. “The charges have been introduced so that citizens won’t enter casually and damage the infrastructure. The initiative is to create awareness among children on traffic rules so that they follow them when they grow up and also make others follow them,” said Hemant Rasane, chairperson of the PMC standing committee.
The NGO executing the initiative will be paid Rs 1.6 lakh per month for creating awareness among children while the PMC will provide security and carry out maintenance of the park. The PMC has already spent Rs 1.5 crore for developing the park.
“Children have a good grasping power. Such initiatives have worked well in many foreign countries. They not only follow traffic rules but also make their parents follow them and point it out when parents violate traffic rules,” said Gojre.
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