LAHORE’S population is estimated to be about 12 million people. If a third of these are children who go to school, 4m children need to move from their homes to school in the morning and then back again around midday. If about half the population works, around 6m people need to move from their homes to their places of work and then back in the evening. And with 12m people involved in their usual business, there is a lot of movement that needs to be catered for.

A lot of cities of this size have opted for fairly extensive public transport networks to facilitate movement. These public transport networks, usually a mix of trains and buses, provide a grid for ensuring that every part of the city is connected to every other part, directly or indirectly, keeping in mind the volume of traffic that flows and is expected to flow from one particular part to another.

A lot more people are expected to move towards business districts from residential areas in the morning. A reverse flow is expected in the evening. Evening flows might be towards parts that provide entertainment (shopping areas, theatre areas etc) and late night flows would usually be towards residential areas again. Weekend demands for facilities would be different from weekday demands and so on. All of these larger cities have very elaborate load management systems and very well-resourced planning and execution departments to ensure the smooth functioning of these large transport networks. The London transport network provides a good example of what we need to keep in mind.

It has become a lot harder for pedestrians and bicycle riders to move around the city.

There are significant differences in how people’s movement is managed in a city like London and in Lahore. Though public transport has been prioritised in Lahore over the last few years by the current government and one large project has been completed and the other, the Orange Train, is under construction, historically the model Lahore has had, by default or by design, was one of relying on private transport and privately provided public transport. Even today, the public system has only one backbone line that is functioning, the other is still under construction, and the network of connecting routes to support the backbone are still under development.

The main change that has happened in transport has not been through the public sector and/or in public transport. The main change has been the decline in the price of motorcycles. Where at one point a 70cc motorcycle was selling for Rs60,000-plus, one can now buy it for under Rs30,000. This has been one of the biggest changes in the transport area in Pakistan over the last decade or so. From selling about a few hundred thousand motorcycles a year, we have now gone to selling a couple of million-plus motorcycles. The drop in prices happened because a clone of the 70cc motorcycle was developed and we had a lot of local and Chinese manufacturers enter the market for producing these clones.

But concurrent with this development we have seen that the government has also moved in the direction of facilitating traffic flows through road broadening and infrastructure upgradation projects. The Lahore signal-free project, construction of numerous underpasses and overpasses, and the broadening of key roads have been key components here.

There are significant and real concerns that have been expressed by various stakeholders about the effects that this model is likely to have on various important environmental, social, and cultural variables. Cutting of trees to broaden roads has an environmental impact. Building concrete infrastructure near heritage sites can destroy them and even if that does not happen, it can change the ‘value’ of the heritage site significantly.

But I want to raise a separate issue too, one that has not been highlighted as much in discussions on the infrastructure development model that Lahore has been following. Signal-free corridors, underpasses and overpasses and broader roads also reshape the urban landscape completely. It has become a lot harder for pedestrians and bicycle riders to move around the city.

If you need an example, try crossing the Ferozepur Road or the Main Boulevard on foot. In some places, overhead pedestrian crossings have been made, but there are too few of them and they are not easy to negotiate. And they are not for bicycle riders. If you have to go an extra kilometre or so to cross a main road, as a pedestrian or cyclist, you are likely to be very discouraged from doing so. Not having lanes/spaces for bicyclists on the main roads is also indicative of the state’s priorities.

If the city plans to have a much larger public transport system eventually — and the bus system, the Orange line and work on support networks that are being operationalised do suggest that — then the developments through the signal-free corridor and underpasses and overpasses might work at odds with the kind of urban spaces that should be thought of, that should accompany the development of the larger public transport system.

Large public transport systems do allow for and make it possible for cities to have spaces where people can walk around or use bicycles and where private transport (cars/motorcycles) are not allowed. And these spaces can be for a lot more people environment- and culture-friendly. Even a city space as built up as Manhattan, and one can hardly think of a more concretised space, decided to close down 20 odd streets on Broadway — one of the busiest roads in the area — to vehicular traffic a few years ago in order to facilitate the development of a bicycle track, walking space and development of street cafés and street culture.

What sort of urban space development model will we go for in the larger cities of Pakistan? I hope there is sufficient debate on this and we do not make decisions by default only.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2017