The school run is a modern phenomenon associated with parents taking their children to school by car.

The way parents park their cars near the school gates to drop off and pick up their children has contributed significantly to the large amount of traffic problems before school and after school rush hours.

Traffic congestion is normally reduced tremendously during school holidays. Due to the lack of convenient bus services, a lot of parents opt to drive their own children to school.

A further problem in recent times has been the choices made by parents as to which schools their children go to. The inevitable result is that kids may have to travel further and are more likely to require a bus or a lift in the car.

Solving traffic congestion due to school run phenomena should be given a priority as the first step towards bus transit oriented development.

A simple way to solve this problem is to prohibit parents from dropping off and picking up their children near school gates.

Only school buses and shuttle buses should be allowed to drop off and pick up school children near school gates. The question now is how to implement this solution without causing any problems or controversies.

School children should be ferried by school buses or shuttle buses between schools and designated bus drop off and pick up points.

Bus pick-up and drop-off points should be modeled after the Rest & Service Areas (RSA) of the North South Expressway.

A public library should be set up at each bus drop-off and pick-up point to provide a safe and comfortable environment for school children to wait for their parents or buses.

A special boarding bay should be designed with a direct link to the library to provide a convenient and secure access.

The boarding bay should be equipped with platforms on level with the bus floor for secure and rapid boarding and alighting.

Parents can drop off and pick up their children from the bus pick-up and drop-off point without causing traffic problems.

If at a kilometre's radius of each school there is several bus pick-up and drop-off points, the traffic that usually converges near school gates will be diverted to a point without causing major traffic congestions.

The reason I wrote this article is to further emphasis the important role that a bus pick-up and drop-off point will play in the transit oriented development- a point that the Lim Guan Eng administration seems unable to comprehend.

Bus pick-up and drop off points are one of the features that encourage transit ridership. Without proper parking space for private vehicles waiting to pick up commuters or without a place to drop off commuters, traffic will become chaotic.

A Bus pick-up and drop off point should be designed to provide an easy exit and entry to the street. It should have sufficient capacity to accommodate long queue of buses during rush hours.

The state government should make it a requirement for property developers to incorporate bus pick-up and drop off points as the front end of their project as part of the transit oriented development initiative.

This will save the state government substantial amount of investment money in building the facilities. Only the maintenance of the infrastructure should be paid for and maintained by the municipality with public funds.

The state government should not approve any new township with multiple storey terrace shop lots like those at Bandar Baru Air Hitam, which is land consuming. All those commercial outlets should be built at the bus pick-up and drop-off points.

The appeal of a bus pick-up and drop off point is apparent when it comes commercial activity. It would not be difficult to persuade property developers to incorporate bus pick-up and drop off point in their property designs.

Imagine a bus pick-up and drop off point like the Tapah R&R at the North-South Expressway, with features such as comfortable waiting areas, vendors selling refreshments and periodicals, and washrooms, built in front of a mixed-use residential or commercial area.

It will not only serve as a transit station, it will also serve as a rest area with a scenic view for leisure and recreational activities. Such activity around the station enlarges its scope from being a transit stop to an enlivened public space in the city.

If Lim Guan Eng is smart, he should not hesitate to adopt this transit solution to build a City Area Transit System (CATS) that gear towards the transit-oriented development. Penang can only become an international class city if it is accessible and livable.