New road plans show how way is being paved for private vehicles.
What we see now in the form of metro buses and proposed mass transit systems is mere damage control in urban localities. For a society whose rural population outnumbers its urban population the ever-increasing need for a public transport policy that aims at resolving the core of the problem is more than a requirement now than it ever was.
Misplaced priorities
It is believed that the popular demand for private vehicles has increased. However, we must adopt a more realistic approach and understand why this has happened. Some of the reasons include the lack of investment in public transport, absence of government regulation and the desire to build more roads rather than concentrate on developing a public transport.
It remains beyond the scope of a single write-up to evaluate the flaws in the public transport system in the North-West of the country. But by taking the example of Peshawar, the most urbanised unit of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, it is not difficult to decipher that there is no system in place. While there has been an outcry on war-affected economies, low living standards and dwindling incomes per household, the transport network, if summarised in a word, could easily be called elitist.
On the roads
The pre-feasibility study of the transport system in Peshawar carried out by the government itself, shows that there are 393,700 passengers looking for public transport daily on GT Road. This makes up almost 77% of the total market flow. During the peak hour there are 20,750 passengers. At the same time, the number of travellers in private vehicles was found out to be 116,003. The total number of passengers, moving from east to west and vice versa, surmounts to 509,703 individuals on a single road. Statistics further show that this is only 44% of the traffic flow of the city. Bearing in mind the high number of commuters and low investment in the system, it is not difficult to imagine the conditions in which residents of the city are commuting daily.
Like everything else, the security paradigm hovers over the traffic woes of the city as well. Blocked roads and umpteen checkpoints are additions to an already clogged city. At present there are two roads: one that runs around the city, Ring Road, which has been incomplete since 1986 and GT Road which cuts through the city and ultimately merges with Ring Road near Hayatabad. The routes for the buses are planned while informal transport is used to reach the main roads from the peripheries.
Rundown vehicles
Moreover, the poor condition of public vehicles also adds fuel to the fire. As per the law, the maximum age limit for a public transport vehicle is 10 years, but the roads are dominated with vehicles from 30-40 years ago, with brand names that even the respective manufacturing companies have discarded. As per the record of the route permits issued by the government, there are 1,146 minibuses, 526 buses, 644 station wagons, 16,801 rickshaws and 3,250 yellow cabs. Almost all of them are owned by private companies.
Even the new infrastructure built around the city, which includes the flyover near Hayatabad, and a few more that are in the pipeline, are all constructed while keeping private vehicles in mind. While there has been much talk about the mass transit system, the government has begun to construct a flyover over one of the proposed routes in Hayatabad through which the mass transit lane is supposed to pass. More worryingly, it is the same route that is used by the largest number of passengers in its own feasibility study.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 30th, 2015.
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