LAHORE, Sept 18: Orangi Pilot Project chairman Arif Hassan has said that traffic problems could be solved successfully only by effective segregation of fast and slow moving and local and through traffic.

Speaking at the Third Hafeez Arain Development Forum on Roads and Transport Sector at the National College of Arts here on Monday, he said that traffic problems could not be solved through increasing the road space by widening roads and building flyovers.

The traffic confusion in Third World cities such as Bangkok, Tehran, Cairo and Manila had become worse despite construction of thousands of kilometers of expressways and flyovers.

He said that mass rail transit projects involved huge investment and could not be used by low-income groups due to high costs of tickets. The projects served only 3.8 percent public transport users in Bangkok, Manila and Cairo.

Building citywide segregated busways like Curutiba in Brazil and Bogota in Colombia was a far cheaper and more feasible solution for Pakistan’s cities.

Punjab Chief Urban Transport Planner Malik Azmat explained the steps being taken by the government for growing public transport problems and pedestrians and wagon owners highlighted the problems and difficulties faced by them.

The forum concluded with a resolution calling for the transport planning not only for facilitating the movement of fast moving private vehicles but also for ensuring the safety and comfort of pedestrians, slow-moving traffic and public transport users.