LONG ago, Lahore became a big cosmopolitan — second biggest in Pakistan and fourteenth in the world — with a large fleet of vehicles, few usable roads, and even fewer traffic management arrangements.
As per a careful estimate, there are six million vehicles registered in Lahore and another four million arrive in and leave the city on any given day. This does not include animal drawn transport plying freely on the city roads. It is to clear this jungle of vehicular mess that the construction of the Mall Underpass has started. Its purpose is to manage the unruly traffic and to give a clear run up to the Motorway. It is also first of the five new underpasses planned at an exorbitant cost of Rs750 million during the current fiscal year. However, the people of Lahore are sceptical about the project and are questioning the priorities of the authorities responsible to run the city.
As per the principles of governance, urban management and simple common sense, whenever any major public work is initiated, before even the first pick hits the ground, it is extensively and openly debated. The tax payers are informed and in the process their consensus is sought. Safe and suitable alternative arrangements are made, in case the work involves any inconvenience, however minor, to the citizens. But this is something that does not seem to be happening anywhere, particularly in case of the Mall Underpass in Lahore.
Like the Karachi-Peshawar railway line, passing North-South through the centre of the country, the Mall Road also divides the city in two halves, East and West, thus taking care of the majority volume of Lahore’s traffic.
While commuting on the Mall, at times one feels it more than other times; rush hours. Which is major traffic jams and chaos at most places downtown, marked the start of this massive project. The Mall Road, a tree lined show-case of the city, and many other roads connected to the Mall were closed. Traffic was diverted on unmarked routes through adjoining residential districts of the Mall — the byways and back alleys that are not meant to take huge volume of the city’s mixed traffic. One city transport company announced that the diversion has increased its route by eight kilometres.
Work started on the Underpass without due warning or sufficient early information to commuters. Even now, there isn’t any sign posted and commuters come to know about the closure when they arrive at the police barriers erected near the construction site.
The wall that was raised “to stop the traffic from entering the privileged GOR in order to save the residents for traffic hazards,” as Lahorites think, has been demolished on the intervention from higher up. One Lahorite, Abdul Waheed says, “The construction of the wall reflects the class structure, importance given to it and how civil servants feel that they are superior to the commoners in the first place.”
People of the city think that the timing chosen for construction of the Underpass are wrong. If the summer holidays in schools and colleges were not important enough consideration to start the work earlier, the expected rains should have alerted the city agencies responsible for planning, to complete the work before or after the monsoon season that spans in Lahore over the months of Sawan and Bhadoon. Just consult any villager and he would have told the city’s engineers that even they don’t start any construction work during the monsoon season. But the city planners, oblivious to the hovering clouds above, didn’t take the hint and construction started on August 15 — Sawan 30. A worker who was pumping out the rain water on site said, “How can the construction be completed in three months as announced when it rains every other day?”
“It is not only a complete disregard to the problems of the residents but also a lack of foresight and long term planning,” says a daily Mall Road commuter Dr Hafeez ur Rahman.
There is no single authority overlooking and coordination and developments in Lahore. “The city development agencies jointly should have reconnoitred the areas; planned and boldly marked the alternative routes ensuring that those routes can take the volume of expected traffic. This cannot be done sitting in air-conditioned offices. Senior officials have to come out in the field and appreciate the situation themselves before making decisions,” complained Mian Ijaz Barri, a retired civil engineer who lives on the Lower Mall and has to drop and pick one of his daughters to Old Campus and the other at de’Montmorency College of Dentistry every day.
“The blaring traffic passes in front of my door these days and my daily going back and forth takes double the time now. But who cares here,” Barri laments?
Previously, the Lahore Development Authority (and TEPA) has been building underpasses in Lahore and also has been working on the Mall Underpass project. Now, the city government is in place (remember the Devolution Plan that was implemented in the country?) but the work has been commissioned to Communication and Works Department by the Provincial Government because “the city government does not have funds,” told a man who is in the know of the matters. The result: bureaucratic sloth and interdepartmental bickering.
“Generally, the priority does not seem to be construction of any public utility, rather it is who takes the credit for it,” remarked Amjad Sandho, a socialite.
A senior citizen and a regular visitor of a mosque, over-looking the Underpass site who was sitting there mourning the fallen trees said, “I am dismayed to see the old trees being chopped without any remorse. Trees take decades to grow and it has taken (them) only hours to cut. They were uprooted in front of my eyes.” He read me a famous poem composed by Majeed Amjad on seeing trees being axed on the bank of Lower Bari Doab Canal passing through Sahiwal. Loosely translated it says: “I feel that my arms, my legs and my head are being cut once I see green trees being chopped off.”
One has to possess a sensibility shaped in granite not to be moved by the narration of the helpless old man.
Whenever something is planned in haste, planners have to repent in leisure. The whole affair could have been well planned and the residents of Lahore could have been saved from immense inconvenience. Nobody doubts that the utility will be useful after completion. But advantages have to be compared with the construction cost, decision cost and the inconvenience caused to the tax payers. Also, nobody doubts that Lahore, with 1500 years of recorded history, will keep on growing despite problems of poor governance. But urban planning and governance — valid fields of activity for the authorities — have to improve. After all, cities cannot be managed with fun, frolics and festivities alone. Anyone listening?
LONG ago, Lahore became a big cosmopolitan — second biggest in Pakistan and fourteenth in the world — with a large fleet of vehicles, few usable roads, and even fewer traffic management arrangements.
