A 400m stretch of the pavements on Loudon Street and Rawdon Street near the gates of the La Martiniere schools have been reduced in width by a metre (marked in red) for cars to drop and pick up students to and from the schools without creating a snarl on the roads. The pavements connect to AJC Bose Road on the one hand and to Shakespeare Sarani on the other. Now that the road width has increased, cars and other vehicles can pull up beside the pavement to help students get off or get in, a traffic cop said. “More than 5,000 private vehicles turn up every day outside the two schools, Birla High School for boys and girls and St. Xavier’s Collegiate School. In the past, this inevitably led to traffic jams since these vehicles were forced to encroach on the motorable space,” the officer said. Picture by Bibhash Lodh