THE citizens of Karachi and certainly those who live within the Defence/Clifton area need to thank their lucky stars! Possibly true, I may add, but only if the very recent underpass accident will wake up the authorities to the dangerous and grave consequences of a very incompetently designed and executed traffic scheme at the Punjab Colony crossing.

It is purely a matter of luck that the tractor trailer which overturned was loaded with relatively less hazardous and easily identified bitumen, which being neither corrosive nor volatile, resulted in no loss of life.

Imagine the disastrous consequences of a trailer carrying say sulphuric acid, ammonia, liquid caustic, LPG, gasoline, diesel or any number of solvents that need to be transported by road.

The emergency response services in our city are woefully ill-equipped to deal with the immediate aftermath of any such disaster involving hazardous materials.

The project is ill-conceived on a number of levels. It is reported that the trailer (probably overloaded beyond its allowed axle weight) could not mount the steep gradient after it lost momentum. It began to roll back uncontrolled and ultimately overturned spilling its contents.

Luck intervened and there was no vehicle immediately behind it. The steep decline and incline on either side of the underpass forces heavy vehicles to first brake and then accelerate over a short distance. Very soon, it will chew up the very smooth road surface to shreds as also happened initially at the very professionally designed Lahore-Islamabad Motorway. I daresay no serious effort was made to conduct a proper environmental impact assessment in approving the engineering design of the project.

In short, a veritable death trap has been created.

Shahid Pracha

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2018