LAHORE, Sept 18: The elevated expressway being mooted by the provincial government will be a ‘disastrous step’ for the city of Lahore, according to Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, and a renowned urban strategist.

Speaking at a talk on sustainable development and transport at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat organised by the Planning and Development department and the Clinton Climate Initiative here on Thursday, Penalosa said high velocity and elevated roads “destroy cities”.

He said: “The difference between advanced cities and backward cities are not highways. The more highways you build, the worse traffic jams you get,” citing data from cities in the Far East to the United States to prove his assertion.

He was of the view that the construction of an elevated expressway would be a waste of funds better spent on schools, hospitals and libraries.

He said the population growth of Lahore meant the city now had a “fantastic opportunity to make a city unparalleled in the world today” by building parks, green spaces and public transport infrastructure. He said by the year 2050 the population of Lahore would at least be 30 million, and that “two-thirds of Lahore has yet to be built”.

Likening the plight of Bogota in 1998, before his tenure as mayor began, to modern-day Lahore, Penalosa drew several parallels between both the prevalent conditions (sprawling unplanned roads, lack of adequate public transport) as well as the mindset of car owners who were reluctant to leave their cars at home in favour of taking the bus.

“The rich of Bogota and Lahore like to brag about their knowledge of the subways of New York, Paris and London. They would never dream of using public transport in their own cities.

“They like to rub shoulders with the poor blacks in New York because it’s chic, but would never mix with the poor in their own city,” he added.

Despite these attitudes, Penalosa claimed that the best transport solution for Lahore laid in the construction of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system involving exclusive bus lanes, articulated buses with multiple entry points, fast-track stations where users are able to “top-up” their fare cards, GPS tracking of the fleet to give arrival time estimates, and full disabled accessibility.

He claimed the BRT, which would be operated like a train system, was now in Bogota carrying 45,000 passengers per hour in each direction, 21 per cent of whom also owned cars, yet choosing to leave them at home because the BRT was more efficient.Bemoaning the lack of space allocated to pedestrians on the roads of Lahore, and of parks and of cycle lanes, he said: “Footpaths are integral to democracy, a symbol of democracy,” in reference to the fact that the interests of the majority are not being catered to.

He added: “What is democracy? It’s not just about having elections. It’s a system in which public good prevails over private interest. This is not poetry, we have to make decisions which benefit the highest number of people.”

On the lack of unpolluted public spaces in Lahore, he said: “A good city is one in which people want to be outdoors. A bad city is one where people prefer to stay in Malls.

Malls are designed like Country Clubs, to make the poor feel unwelcome. If I walk in a Lamborghini showroom, I’m afraid the manager will come and say “Can I help you sir?” “No, just looking around,” I’ll say, and he’ll say “This isn’t a museum Sir!”

He said the government was constitutionally obliged to build cycle paths for its citizens, adding: “If my father was killed while riding his cycle, because there was no cycle path, I would sue the government.”

Penalosa’s proposals have influenced transport policies in a number of cities around the world. He was joined by Oscar Diaz, a senior programme director and the Institute for Transport and Development Policy (ITDP), New York, USA, who outlined the salient features of the BRT which had been taken up across Latin America and the Far East.

Diaz said the buses represented the best-value prospect for developing countries because US $1billion could buy 416km of BRT, 40km of Light Railway, 14km of elevated rail, and 7km of subway. Fares on subway systems were only accessible in developed countries and many systems were subsidised to the tune of billions of dollars a year just to keep them afloat, which was not viable in the developing world, he said.