EVEN the most casual observer of the streets of Pakistan would testify that the situation is absolute chaos. To many who fight their way through urban areas every day, it seems that the quality of the roads is perpetually deteriorating, the number and mix of vehicles constantly growing. Now, there seems to be empirical evidence of this. At a recent meeting of the Sindh Assembly’s committee on home affairs in Karachi, officials of the Anti-Car-Lifting Cell produced data related to the number of vehicles in the city and the nature of crimes committed in this regard. According to the excise and taxation department, some 700 new motorbikes are registered in the city every day. The figure bears emphasis — 700 every single day. This is, of course, apart from the cars, vans, lorries and so forth. It turns out that in 2007, there were some 800,000 registered motorbikes in the metropolis; today, there are nearly 3m.

These figures are a general indication of the growing numbers of vehicles on the streets of the country. This is something to think about — and not only in terms of the congested traffic conditions that cause long delays; carbon emissions across the world have reached critical levels, and the authorities here should realise the dangers posed to public health and the natural environment. The fact is that the country — especially the megacity of Karachi — simply cannot defend the absence of a cost- and fuel-efficient public transport system anymore. People need to commute, and they shouldn’t have to totally rely on private transport to do so — just as they don’t in much of the developed world. But beyond that, once the country makes this a priority, is the reality that mass transit systems need to organically gel with the areas in which they have been set up. In Lahore, for example, where a multi-billion-rupee mass transit system has been set up, there are credible concerns for the cultural heritage. Pakistan can only get ahead through concerted planning.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2017