Traffic. Jam or Stew?

NOVEMBER 2003 - Marshalled like cattle at a traffic crossing the other day – one of our many excellencies was on the move and the traffic policemen were in a frenzy of shouting, waving and blowing whistles at everything and anything, I was wondering how soon do their lordships forget the reality of life in this country. I suppose the answer is, very soon. As sirens wailed and lines of vehicles piled up on three sides of the intersection, the policemen danced with even more vigour and the whistles blew like a Brazilian samba. Twenty minutes later, traveling at the speed of sound, the VIP entourage appeared on the horizon, red and blue lights flashing, the sleek black limos hissing along the road followed by half a dozen aspiring Schumachers. The bedlam came later.

VIPs who ostensibly charter the country’s course lose touch with reality a few seconds before they are sworn in. Some lose it much earlier and some never have it anyway. Behind the tinted glasses of officialdom, it is always sunny weather. The harsh light of reality has little chance of getting through and even if it could, there are layers of thick skin, which do an admirable job. This may explain partly why little progressive public policies emanate from high up. Like all things here, the solutions are simple and yet for all that matters, they are beyond hope.

Traffic jams are now as frequent a sight as the clouds of oppressive dust that hold most of the country in a death-like, suffocating grip. Officialdom’s answer to this growing menace is to widen the roads, the bright idea being that the wider the road, the smoother the traffic flows. Traffic Engineering for that is what we call it euphemistically, seems to be convinced that there is no other way. Agreed that the roads in Pakistan represent some kind of mind boggling challenge where disorder and chaos rules supreme and traffic comes in all shapes, sizes and speeds that leave little room for creating order, but there are solutions possible except that the brains of the planners are in the way – brains being used in the loosest possible manner of course. Lahore is a classic case where by widening some choice VIP route roads, the chaos has been scaled up to Formula 1 levels. What chaos and disarray was experienced at 30 mph on a 20-foot wide road is now experienced at 60 mph on a 40-foot wide road. And this is on the cursed VIP routes. Elsewhere in the city, where the benign eyes of the rulers are unable to see, the roads remain as they were, potholed, narrow and congested, while the traffic in numbers too large to grasp, swarms like flies, packed together with no one prepared to give half an inch or display the slightest courtesy. So, tempers fly, fights breakout, the language takes a beating, accidents repeat themselves, disorder remains the order of the day and life goes on. There are traffic lights but for most part of the year, seem to be in a permanent state of death. As and when they proceed to flutter to life, they tend to go on the yellow blink which means license to kill on the roads has been granted and may the most violent and vicious one, take the day. There was once talk of a ‘green window’ on Lahore’s nightmare pride and joy, The Mall so that with God in the right place and heaven smiling down at us sinners, theoretically it would be possible to traverse most of The Mall in one go. This has not happened and is not likely to. UFOs don’t land daily in your back lawn.

The other cities, mistakenly called metros, don’t fare any better. In the smaller towns, life moves along miserably, as it has for many years. With population rising and babies floating down from the rafters in numbers that should have years ago killed the Population Planning Ministry of shame, it is a lost battle anyway. There are just too many people and the infrastructure – for that is what we still call it, is neither capable o handling it and neither does the country have the basic discipline to manage its disorder to give it some sanity. Then there are the traffic weeks, which is another joke that is conducted with monotonous regularity. While traffic wardens at selected points, ramble on in language that no one can quite comprehend, the mayhem on the roads continues as before. In a week, the banners have been removed, the temporary kiosks and safety messages have been thrown aside and everyone gets back to misbehaving with renewed gusto. Now and then, a few stragglers appear with paint brushes and painstakingly refresh the zebra lines, though neither the traffic masters nor the people understand what these lines represent. Even if they did, there is absolutely no possibility of observing any rules. As the number of vehicles climbs and as the level of discipline falls lower daily, all roads in the country represent our nation in is truest colour. A people who have no respect for rules, have no time for anyone other than themselves and have not the slightest sense of patience and good behaviour. What an irony it is that a country where people have far too much time should always be in the throes of hurry. Galen Rowell wrote once that ‘Pakistan is a country in a hurry to go nowhere,’ and he was right. Look at any road, at any time of the day and you know he got it right.

So what do we do? Should we continue as we are, satisfied when we jump a traffic light, sneak out from the wrong side, cut to a better position in the line, break the rule and never got hauled up? Very few of us are VIPs or ever going to be ones, thank God, so we have to live with this problem, but who is going to solve it for us? Can the people of Karachi bank on their administrators who have reduced their city to a mass of crawling, fighting, cursing commuters? Obviously not. Like elsewhere, the country’s administrators are guilty on all counts of having fathered policies and regulations that have multiplied the disorder. They have regularized illegal and oversized buildings on key roads without ordering mandatory parking spaces that should have been the first priority. Roads have been and are being arbitrarily ‘commercialised’ to earn enormous sums of money – graft and grease integrated in the system, without so much as a technical evaluation of what this would do to the traffic. Witness the M.M. Alam road in Lahore or any similar one in Karachi or Rawalpindi and you can see the blind ad hoc and arbitrary policies in full flow. Free permission to build at traffic choke points – Karachi is reeling with this and taking a beating. Chanesar Halt, Zebunnisa/Sarwar Shaheed Road, Club/Mereweather Road – the list is long. Plans approved without provision of mandatory parking spaces leading to more crushing on the roads so affected are commonplace in every city. Construction of unauthorised schools, hospitals, marriage halls in residential areas have heaped misery on the lives of the people. Service lanes are clogged by car dealers, fruit sellers and forcible parking by residents. Unauthorsied ‘khokas’ and kiosks mushroom in thousands to block traffic yet all understand that a ten rupee note to the wandering cop is all it takes to remain entrenched.

Over and above everything else is the national psyche - no sense of discipline. We are simply incapable of it. The traffic police is lost at sea but if by some miracle it can simply start putting people in the right lanes and come down heavy on violators, there can be marked improvement. Very few know or understand that your speed and direction determines which lane you should be in. As for the government, it cannot wish this problem to go away. It will not. They should act but there’s no hope. Last week, in Karachi, the local authorities began leasing pavements to vendors. We should simply give up I guess.