Traffic and mass transit issues

“IT IS very clear today that solving traffic problems by building more and bigger roads is like trying to put out a fire by gasoline” — Enrique Penalosa, the mayor who solved Bogota’s traffic problems.

In the last 20 years a large number of Third World cities have made huge investments in trying to solve their traffic problems and in building mass transit systems for their commuters. These traffic and mass transit related projects and programmes have been studied and evaluated by academics, relevant professionals and practitioners and by civil society organizations and a number of lessons have been learnt as a result.

Karachi should benefit from these lessons as the government is in the process of constructing large traffic engineering projects for the city and proposing a variety of mass transit systems.

Bangkok, Tehran, Manila, Cairo, to name a few cities, have built hundreds of kilometres of expressways and hundreds of flyovers. Yet, their traffic conditions have not improved. As a matter of fact, they have become worse over time. Karachi today is far better off than them. The reason for this is that traffic problems are not solved simply by building expressways and flyovers but by effective segregation of through and local traffic, fast and slow traffic, pedestrianization of appropriate precincts and above all by the development of a rational land-use policy and its implementation.

For example, the building of the Lyari Expressway will lead to real estate development on either side of the river which in turn will generate over 50,000 additional vehicles to this corridor once this development is complete. If we had not built the Expressway but had invested in relocating the Metal Market, the Dhan Mandi and the Chemical Market to the Northern Bypass and the recycling industries to landfill sites, we could have reduced about 30,000 vehicle trips per day into the old city. This includes heavy vehicles as well. As a result, we would have been able to provide badly needed amenities to the inner city which are now encroached upon by warehousing and cargo handling spaces for these markets and this would have created an environment for salvaging our built-heritage.

Similarly, instead of building the KPT underpass, we could have extended the oil pipeline from the refinery to a point on the National Highway and could have created an oil terminal there. This would have removed 20,000 tankers which now ply between Shireen Jinnah Colony and the National Highway through Sunset Boulevard. Scores of such examples can be listed for the city of Karachi which also involve the movement of containers.

Planners in Manila and Bangkok are of the opinion that the failure of their investments in traffic engineering is the result of ad-hoc decisions not based on a comprehensive traffic and land-use plan. In Cairo, there is an opinion that some of the existing flyovers will have to be removed if Cairo’s traffic problems are to be solved.

All the cities mentioned above have also invested heavily in mass transit systems using elevated light rail and also metro in the case of Bangkok and Kolkata. These systems have neither solved their transport problems, nor have they helped in solving their traffic problems. The reasons for this are that the rail based mass transit systems that have been built are on too small a scale to have a citywide impact; they are too expensive for the lower income groups to use; and they were built on corridors used by the maximum number of commuters although in most cases these commuters come to these corridors from other locations often far from these corridors. In addition, these systems have not decongested the corridors on which they have been built, as they were supposed to. On the contrary, these corridors have become further congested as the light rail stations have become places of interchange between different modes of commuting.

The reasons for these failures are simple. One, light rail systems are expensive and as such Third World cities have not been able to invest adequately in them. As a result, Bangkok’s sky train serves only three per cent of Bangkok’s commuting population; Manila’s serves only eight per cent; Cairo’s only two to three per cent; and Kolkata’s and Tehran’s metro even less. The rest of the population uses rundown and often deteriorating bus systems. Two, since these systems have often been built without subsidies and are supposed to operate without subsidies also, they are expensive to use. The average cost of Bangkok’s light rail per trip is 25 bhath as opposed to five bhath for a similar journey by bus. Manila’s case is the same. So the poor do not use these systems.

Due to the reasons given above, Latin American cities are now opting, with considerable success, for segregated bus ways which operate in a manner similar to the light rail systems but are much cheaper to construct and as such have a larger outreach. Elevated light rails’ cost about US$40 million per kilometre; light rail at-grade about $10 million per kilometre; and an electric trolley bus system, operating in a manner similar to the light rail, $3 million to $5 million per kilometre. The trolley bus system is also noiseless and as such causes no noise or air pollution and can be extended with comparative ease as compared to rail systems. In term of outreach what does this mean? Corridor One, 15 kilometres of elevated light rail, was supposed to be built for $668 million. At-grade we could have built 68 kilometres and we could have built 225 kilometres of trolley bus systems for the same sum. However, the pros and cons of these systems have to be studied keeping in view of our socio-economic conditions and lessons learnt from other countries.

The Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) connects all the major work areas of the city where according to the Karachi Development Plan 2000, 45 per cent of Karachi’s commuting public works. It can be turned into a light rail system and can be extended at-grade into the major residential areas which are Baldia, Orangi, North Karachi, and Landhi-Korangi where 68 per cent of the commuting public originates. This seems to be the most rational project for the city along with the development of trolley bus corridors. It is also possible to turn the KCR corridor into a trolley bus system. However, these are issues that the transport engineers will have to decide in consultation with academics and civil society organizations.

Whatever decisions are ultimately taken, it is important that traffic engineering projects are a part of a larger city level traffic and land-use plan and not ad-hoc local level interventions as they are today. Mass transit systems should not be “prestige” projects but should serve the maximum number of commuters in the shortest period of time, and be affordable, even if their “efficiency” is compromised to some extent. And, finally, elevated systems should not be built in the inner city where Karachi’s extraordinarily rich built-heritage is located.

The traffic engineering and mass transit projects will change our city unrecognisably, for better or for worse, as they have other cities. For better, only if these projects and systems benefit the bulk of our lower and lower-middle income groups who are pedestrians and public transport users and who comprise 70 per cent of Karachi’s population.

Japan in a quandary over Iran nuclear issue

TOKYO: The intensifying crisis over Iran’s nuclear activity has thrown a nasty diplomatic curve at Japan, where a big thirst for oil has collided with its self-image as the world’s conscience against the spread of nuclear weapons.

Monday’s move to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear programme has forced many countries — including France, Russia and India — to weigh economic costs against the perils of Tehran possibly joining the atomic weapons club. But only in Japan, which openly aspires to have more clout in global affairs, is the calculus complicated by a foreign policy and self-identity forged on a moral opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons.

As the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack, with the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, Japan is in a singular position. The collective memory of suffering has been stoked in recent years by an emerging nuclear threat from neighbour North Korea, whose erratic leadership boasts of an atomic arsenal and declares a readiness to do to Japan what Iran has threatened to do to Israel: wipe it off the map.

“It’s a very difficult dilemma for Japan and a very sensitive issue inside the government,” says Tsutomu Toichi, managing director of the Japan Institute of Energy Economics. Yes, $70-a-barrel oil makes many Japanese uneasy, Toichi says. But this is a country where the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving more than a quarter of a million dead, remains a powerful influence on public opinion.

“The Japanese public remains very concerned about nuclear weapons development, especially with the very real North Korean threat,” he says.

It is a collision of national interests that has left the Japanese government, otherwise desperate to be taken seriously as a major international player, unable to do much more than follow as others lead, softly expressing its hope that Iran will back down.

“It is important that Iran makes a sincere response over its suspected nuclear development,” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Tuesday at his official residence, his first comments this year on the Iran crisis. “Japan will cooperate [with the international community] to have it deal properly with the nuclear suspicions.”

Koizumi’s caution matches that of his cabinet. Foreign Minister Taro Aso suggested last week that a referral to the Security Council was unlikely to lead to economic sanctions against Iran in the near term.

But many trade and energy officials here worry that the Iranian nuclear crisis is putting Japan’s fuel supply at risk. Japan imports almost all its energy — even its large nuclear power industry runs on imported uranium — and is competing with its rivals, China in particular, for new sources.

Iran is Japan’s third-largest supplier, delivering 16 per cent of its oil, an amount expected to swell significantly when drilling starts on a joint mega-project to develop Iran’s massive Azadegan oil field.

Azadegan is one of the world’s largest untapped oil reserves, with an estimated 26 billion barrels. Japan had hoped to begin drilling at the site this year, though the project is being held up because of a dispute over the clearance of land mines, remnants of the war with Iraq in the 1980s.

An influential bloc of trade and energy officials in Tokyo contend that the Azadegan project could reduce Japan’s dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf states, which supply more than half the country’s imports. The officials have been negotiating to develop the site almost since it was discovered six years ago, resisting strong US pressure to avoid doing business with Tehran. In 2004, they cut a deal that gave Inpex, a Japanese oil company whose major shareholder is the Japanese government, 75 per cent of the field development rights.

Critics note that Washington’s opposition to the project dissipated in 2004, about the time Japan sent a contingent of soldiers to aid Iraqi reconstruction. But the Koizumi government also has been very reluctant to join the United States’ public scolding of Iran.

“We want the Iranians to back down,” says Akira Chiba, a spokesman for Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs. “Japan is committed to anti-nuclear proliferation 100 per cent. But it’s a question of how, and punching Iran in the face is not our idea of how.”

That cautious approach meant Koizumi made no comment last month when Iran resumed some nuclear activities. And no senior Japanese leaders condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declarations last year that the Holocaust was a ‘myth’ and that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’.

Japan’s only sign of protest was delivered in a private meeting with the Iranian ambassador in Tokyo, who was summoned to meet with foreign affairs bureaucrats.

The Japanese silence was not lost on Israelis, who had planned to raise the matter with Koizumi during a planned trip to the Middle East in January. The visit was cancelled after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke.

Yet no matter how tepid it tries to keep its diplomacy, observers say, Japan is unlikely to escape any backlash should Tehran try to use its oil weapon to punish those opposing it.

“They are very concerned about how Iran will respond,” Toichi said. “The Japanese government is making every effort to privately persuade the Iranians to back down. But I’m not sure how seriously Iran takes these overtures.” —Dawn/Los Angeles Times News Service