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THE words would be familiar to anyone with even a pedestrian interest in city development and traffic management: ‘A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.’ This is a (paraphrased) comment by Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia.
He was the third of the city’s consecutive mayors that set out to turn what was one of the world’s most violent and corrupt cities, in addition to being one characterised by congested and chaotic traffic, into a thriving model of peace and sustainable development.
The first mayor in the series, Jamie Castro, reformed the city’s financial structures that led to lasting budgetary surpluses. Castro was succeeded by Antanas Mockus, who started the Cultura Ciudadana (Citizen Culture) campaign, which sought to promote in citizens a sense of ownership over the city. Penalosa initiated a number of city-improving mega projects, including an extensive bike path network and a mass transit system (he was jokingly and sometimes in earnest accused of having declared war on private vehicles).
Vendors encroaching on public streets were relocated, sidewalks were raised and protected with bollards to prevent vehicles being parked there, and lots of new public parks were constructed, in addition to improving the ones that already existed. In the short span of 10 years, Bogota was a changed city.
What Karachi desperately needs is an effective mass transit system.
Penalosa must have itched to get to work when he was here in Karachi earlier this year. By practically any definition of a city that works, it is clear that the Pakistani metropolis does not. Indeed, it sometimes comes as a matter of astonishment that in the sense of everyday operations, it continues to function at all.
The worrying thing is that no one in city management appears to worry too much, at least if their interventions are any indication. On his visit here, Penalosa warned of a total meltdown if the right steps weren’t taken immediately.
As it is, the figures relating to Karachi are shocking. According to the Asian Development Bank, the city population has grown more than 4pc per year since 1998, at which rate, by 2030, it will top 31 million. The roads are already filled to capacity. Buses make up less than 5pc of the vehicles in operation. If it feels like there are more and more vehicles every day, that’s because there are. There were slightly over 1.1 million vehicles on the streets of Karachi in 2002; by 2013, there were 3.1 million.
What interventions have been initiated thus far? For one thing, city managers say with pride, four main arteries have been turned into signal-free corridors. Yet a study presented at a conference at the Karachi University last week pointed out that the city has 9,500 kilometres of road networks, with the four signal-free corridors constituting a mere 100km of this. Further, it seems that 20pc of the fatal and non-fatal traffic accidents in the city — a grossly disproportionate number — take place on these sections of road.
What Karachi urgently, desperately needs is an effective mass transit system. Happily for Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad, basic systems have already been put in place there. There are merits to the criticism they weren’t perhaps the best bang for the buck coming from the public exchequer, and that other routes might have provided better coverage. But at least the initial foray has been made. Unhappily for Karachi, plans for the revival of the Karachi Circular Railway or other mass transit systems have been on ice for years, with no real hope of them ever being brought out.
Part of the problem is that like anywhere else, it is the city’s elites, economic and bureaucratic, that are in charge of making the decisions and initiating city improvement projects — and they have neither a stake in this nor is it their problem. The VVIPs whizz along while the police stop traffic and clear their paths.
As for the slightly less important, when driving became a nuisance and the traffic too much to handle, they hired drivers. When did you last see a sahib or his begum sahib piloting their own vehicle through a traffic jam? Even the endless piles of refuse on the roads and the extreme poverty can be ignored with tinted windows, an air-conditioned interior and the close perusal of a file or a smartphone. And this applies even to ‘ordinary elites’, the average citizen of Defence or Clifton or PECHS who could be part of a pressure lobby, but won’t because it’s easy to hire a solution.
What’s the answer, then? One lies in local governments, because that’s the system where men and women from the masses rise to positions of decision-making. Another is caring leadership, the Bogota way. A third is citizen intervention. Wherever it comes from an answer has to be found.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2015
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