Absence of school parking lots chokes neighborhoods

DAMMAM – The overcrowding crisis exacerbated in front of schools in various districts of Dammam as a result of lack of parking lots. Some people stop their vehicles in random and chaotic ways blocking some streets and causing traffic jams, while some residents put barriers and signs to warn motorists against parking in front of their homes. Some residents of neighborhoods near secondary school for boys called for allocating parking space for teachers and students to end the congestion witnessed in neighborhoods. Abdullatif Al-Mana, who resides in Fouad neighborhood in Dammam, said: “There is a school near the neighborhood that caused suffocating crowds to people who go out in the morning or come home during working hours of schools due to large number of cars in front of homes and on the sidewalks in a chaotic manner.” Ali Al-Ghanim said the importance of coordination between education and traffic management when creating new secondary schools for boys; to provide adequate space for parking to eliminate the randomness in the morning and even neighborhoods become more organized. Abdul Ilah Al-Saeed said that it is better to provide transportation facilities to students; to eliminate congestion and random parking praising the university successfully utilizing transportation to ease congestion and traffic jams. This facility, he said, helps students get in a timely manner to their classes at the university. The spokesman at the Department of Education in the Eastern Province Saed Al-Bahs said recently they have made an inventory of all schools in the region located within residential neighborhoods that need to have parking lots. The department is working to find radical solutions to this matter, adding that there are always warnings to the students and teachers not to cause inconvenience to the neighbors by parking near gates of their private homes. Spokesman for the Kingdom’s Traffic Police, Col. Tariq Al-Rubaiaan, said schools must not be granted licenses unless they follow  municipality and police requirements to assess if the site is appropriate.