Mobility in Urban Spaces

LAHORE’S population is estimated to be about 12 million people. If a third of these are children who go to school, 4m children need to move from their homes to school in the morning and then back again around midday. If about half the population works, around 6m people need to move from their homes to their places of work and then back in the evening. And with 12m people involved in their usual business, there is a lot of movement that needs to be catered for.

A lot of cities of this size have opted for fairly extensive public transport networks to facilitate movement. These public transport networks, usually a mix of trains and buses, provide a grid for ensuring that every part of the city is connected to every other part, directly or indirectly, keeping in mind the volume of traffic that flows and is expected to flow from one particular part to another.

A lot more people are expected to move towards business districts from residential areas in the morning. A reverse flow is expected in the evening. Evening flows might be towards parts that provide entertainment (shopping areas, theatre areas etc) and late night flows would usually be towards residential areas again. Weekend demands for facilities would be different from weekday demands and so on. All of these larger cities have very elaborate load management systems and very well-resourced planning and execution departments to ensure the smooth functioning of these large transport networks. The London transport network provides a good example of what we need to keep in mind.

There are significant differences in how people’s movement is managed in a city like London and in Lahore. Though public transport has been prioritised in Lahore over the last few years by the current government and one large project has been completed and the other, the Orange Train, is under construction, historically the model Lahore has had, by default or by design, was one of relying on private transport and privately provided public transport. Even today, the public system has only one backbone line that is functioning, the other is still under construction, and the network of connecting routes to support the backbone are still under development.

The main change that has happened in transport has not been through the public sector and/or in public transport. The main change has been the decline in the price of motorcycles. Where at one point a 70cc motorcycle was selling for Rs60,000-plus, one can now buy it for under Rs30,000. This has been one of the biggest changes in the transport area in Pakistan over the last decade or so. From selling about a few hundred thousand motorcycles a year, we have now gone to selling a couple of million-plus motorcycles. The drop in prices happened because a clone of the 70cc motorcycle was developed and we had a lot of local and Chinese manufacturers enter the market for producing these clones.

But concurrent with this development we have seen that the government has also moved in the direction of facilitating traffic flows through road broadening and infrastructure upgradation projects. The Lahore signal-free project, construction of numerous underpasses and overpasses, and the broadening of key roads have been key components here.

There are significant and real concerns that have been expressed by various stakeholders about the effects that this model is likely to have on various important environmental, social, and cultural variables. Cutting of trees to broaden roads has an environmental impact. Building concrete infrastructure near heritage sites can destroy them and even if that does not happen, it can change the ‘value’ of the heritage site significantly.

But I want to raise a separate issue too, one that has not been highlighted as much in discussions on the infrastructure development model that Lahore has been following. Signal-free corridors, underpasses and overpasses and broader roads also reshape the urban landscape completely. It has become a lot harder for pedestrians and bicycle riders to move around the city.

If you need an example, try crossing the Ferozepur Road or the Main Boulevard on foot. In some places, overhead pedestrian crossings have been made, but there are too few of them and they are not easy to negotiate. And they are not for bicycle riders. If you have to go an extra kilometre or so to cross a main road, as a pedestrian or cyclist, you are likely to be very discouraged from doing so. Not having lanes/spaces for bicyclists on the main roads is also indicative of the state’s priorities.

If the city plans to have a much larger public transport system eventually — and the bus system, the Orange line and work on support networks that are being operationalised do suggest that — then the developments through the signal-free corridor and underpasses and overpasses might work at odds with the kind of urban spaces that should be thought of, that should accompany the development of the larger public transport system.

Large public transport systems do allow for and make it possible for cities to have spaces where people can walk around or use bicycles and where private transport (cars/motorcycles) are not allowed. And these spaces can be for a lot more people environment- and culture-friendly. Even a city space as built up as Manhattan, and one can hardly think of a more concretised space, decided to close down 20 odd streets on Broadway — one of the busiest roads in the area — to vehicular traffic a few years ago in order to facilitate the development of a bicycle track, walking space and development of street cafés and street culture.

What sort of urban space development model will we go for in the larger cities of Pakistan? I hope there is sufficient debate on this and we do not make decisions by default only.

From the Dawn, Pakistan, published Friday 25th August, 2017.

Registering an FIR and After

ABOUT eight years ago, a friend’s car was stolen from outside his house in Lahore. He went to the police immediately. It took all his connections and three days of effort to get a First Information Report (FIR) registered.

About a month later, he received a phone call from the concerned police station to let him know that his car had been ‘recovered’ and that he could come and collect it. The car was a bit battered and rundown, but it was all there. It seemed the police had recovered it a week or 10 days prior to calling my friend and had been using it in the meantime. It took my friend another 10 days to get possession of his car.

This would still have been a happy story had it ended there. But it did not. Since no one had been arrested or convicted for the crime of stealing my friend’s car, the FIR he had registered remained open. The car was evidence and my friend was told that he could have his car back but he would be responsible for producing it anytime the police or the courts needed it. Eight years later, my friend is still saddled with the car. He would like to sell it but he cannot. Though he has never been contacted by the police or the courts since, his possession still continues to be conditional. He could sell the car at a steep discount but my law-abiding friend is concerned: what if they ask him to produce it someday?

He did inquire about the process of getting the FIR quashed and the matter disposed of, but he felt he did not have the time, money or the connections to pull it off. He is resigned to the fact that this car will stay with him ‘till death do them part’.

Another acquaintance had a similar experience. But, eventually, after a year of spending a lot of time and money in the concerned police station and lower courts, he was able to have the authorities close the case and was then able to sell his car. But even after everything was done, he was not sure if all proceedings had been carried out legally and if the paper he had received was enough.

It is no surprise that when, quite recently, another friend’s car was stolen, he worked on ensuring that his vehicle was not recovered. Instead, he worked on getting the requisite paperwork from the concerned police station so that he could get his insurance claim processed and just buy a new car. He took a hit of a few hundred thousand rupees but he felt that the loss incurred was still more tolerable than the hassle of waiting for his car to be recovered and then going through the process of getting the FIR quashed etc.

Why do the police need the physical car as evidence even in this day and age? Could documents, photos and other evidence not be substituted for the original? There must other ways of dealing with the quashing of an FIR as well.

There has been a lot of talk, recently, of how new technology has been introduced at police stations and law enforcement, and how citizen help desks have been set up for almost everything. Yet, on issues that matter to the citizen, especially when it comes to interaction with the police station staff, almost nothing seems to have changed.

A couple of years ago, a gentleman I know was held up inside one of the ATMs he was visiting. The robbers made him use all his cards to their limit and left him poorer by a couple of hundred thousand rupees in the process. He had an FIR registered. As is usually the case, it took much effort to do so. The police asked him to get video recordings from the cameras at the ATM. The gentleman had to convince his bank to share the relevant video recording with the police station.

He visited the police station three to four weeks later to check on the progress that had been made on his case. To his astonishment, his photo was also displayed on the police station noticeboard as a wanted person. “Whoever was in the camera footage that we got, we have put their picture up. It is for the courts to decide who is guilty of these and who is not,” said the station house officer. The gentleman has never been back at the station and he has heard nothing about the case from the police. He is quite glad he has not heard back from the police.

Having facilitation desks, technology and new rules over and above an existing but archaic system does not solve problems. In fact, it complicates things further. If your car is stolen, Dolphin and other police personnel can be there in less than 10 minutes now. But if they still need an FIR first to be able to move, and the FIR is going to be registered in the old way, you are still giving the robbers a 36- to 48-hour head start, even if you are very connected. What is the point of new personnel and technology here?

Of late, I have been reading Osama Siddique’s new novel Snuffing Out the Moon. It is a historical fiction spread over six epochs: Mohenjodaro, Taxila, Jahangir’s time, 1857, 2009 and 2084. A key theme that runs through the novel is that irrespective of the form of government, the lack of space for citizens to participate effectively in governance or work out even decent, let alone optimal, governance arrangements for the people creates most of the problems that citizens face. Those in power seldom have an interest in addressing the issue, and so the citizens continue to struggle.

From the Dawn, Pakistan, published Friday August 11th, 2017.