SINGAPORE – The traffic situation outside some schools in Bukit Timah has improved slightly, a few years after measures were introduced in 2020 to keep peak hour congestion manageable.
These include staggering reporting times of schools in the area, and converting Hillcrest Road, where Raffles Girls’ Primary School (RGPS) is located, into a one-way street from 1pm to 2pm during school dismissal.
Traffic during arrival and dismissal times at RGPS has been a perennial problem for many years due to the school’s proximity to Dunearn Road, which is a main road that is used to get to other schools in the area, like Nanyang Girls’ High School and National Junior College.
Parents would need to turn into Hillcrest Road – a two-way road consisting of single lanes – from Dunearn Road in order to enter the school’s compound.
Although the dismissal time at RGPS is 1.20pm, parents are only allowed to drive in to pick up their children at 1.40pm.
In an advisory notice sent to parents in June 2023, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said that it will not allow vehicles to wait along Dunearn Road and Hillcrest Road ahead of time before the school gate opens at 1.40pm.
Ms Ang Kai Shin, a grassroots volunteer who leads the traffic task force in Bukit Timah, said that regular enforcement was needed to help motorists keep to the arrangement of Hillcrest Road being a one-way street.
“The school also needed help to discourage cars from picking up and dropping off students along the road, as well as parking obstructively, which were dangerous practices and also exacerbated the congestion,” said Ms Ang.
In 2021, LTA added another zebra crossing along Hillcrest Road and some safety features at a crossing near the bus stop at Tan Kah Kee MRT station.
Still, parents continue to wait along Dunearn Road as early as 1.10pm to pick their children up, according to checks by The Straits Times in the second week of January.
An RGPS staff member, who declined to be named, said morning drop-offs are not an issue, as students alight from cars quickly and traffic is moving.
He said: “Afternoons are the problem because parents arrive too early and start queuing up along the road. Our gates only open at 1.40pm. But there is definitely less honking and noise, and the residents complain less about these issues.”
A parent who wanted to be known only as Mrs Gill said the situation has improved over the last three years due to efforts of the school and traffic wardens to regulate traffic.
“No one wants to break the law, but there is no other solution on what to do. Dunearn Road is a generally crowded road because of all the schools in the area. If parents come only after 1.40pm, they will end up waiting even longer, and no one wants that,” said the 44-year-old real estate director, who has two daughters in SGPS, in Primary 2 and Primary 4.