Who cares about logic?
Having worked with leading master planning consultancies over the last few years, words like livable city, walkable and cycle able city, increased tree plantation to reduce the heat island effect come to mind when planning of new corridors, a permeable city that allows unhindered access to people and goods. Unfortunately, these are alien words that hold no value to either our rulers or to the designers they employ. Beautiful cities in the world are renowned for leafy boulevards and celebration points where families and tourists enjoy themselves, not signal free corridors. Lahore, the jewel in the Mughal courts’ crown, is being defaced.
Had MrShahbaz Sharif been the Khadim e Alaa of Rome the entire route from Piazza del Popolo to the Spanish steps would have converted into a signal free corridor, Prada and Gucci would have had to dismantle their flagship stores on Via de Condotti. Were Mr Shahbaz Sharif the chief minister of Paris, the Arch de Triumph would have been demolished to make way for an elevated Metro bus and the Champs Elysees denuded of trees would be separated by metal bars to ensure that pedestrians on either side of the road never meet. Had PML-N government been in charge of London,Piccadilly Circus would have had to make way for The Piccadilly Underpass to facilitate unhindered auto travel from Cambridge Circus to Oxford Circus.
However, as the election commission informs us, due to numerous unverifiable thumb prints and elections, Mr Shahbaz Sharif remains firmly Khaadim e Alaa of Punjab with a license to massacre trees under the guise of developmental projects. The latest of these monstrosities is what is referred to as the signal free corridor.
Had MrShahbaz Sharif been the Khadim-e-Alaa of Rome the entire route from Piazza del Popolo to the Spanish steps would have converted into a signal free corridor, Prada and Gucci would have had to dismantle their flagship stores on Via de Condotti
This project, designed to improve travel along Jail road and Main Boulevard Gulberg by upgrading the road from an arterial to effectively a freeway thereby increasing the lane vehicle carrying capacity, will in the end probably result in worsened road safety and not much improvement in travel time, yet the LDA is charging on. A major principal of highway safety is never force slow moving traffic onto the path of fast moving traffic, yet this is exactly what the new signal free corridor is advocating.
Based on LDA’s own traffic count approximately 100,000 vehicles ply daily on the Lahore Main Boulevard, or a peak hour traffic of 10,000 vehicles per direction this in any case is almost twice as much as a three lane freeway can handle, so the least LDA should do is encourage more traffic instead developing alternate corridors and encouraging public transport usage.
The design flies in the face of the modal make up of Lahore traffic namely an increased use of motorcycles — a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future, these don’t need fast roads, and the elimination of signalised right turns will now endanger lives, as to turn right cars and motorcyclists must now first turn left, then weave through fast traffic to carry out a U-turn and then again weave through traffic on the slow lane; a dangerous maneuver especially at night or when more than two people are riding on the bike. A recent report on signal free corridors in Karachi poignantly points out that although such corridors only make up one percent of the road lengths, yet they are responsible for twenty percent of all fatalities, particularly for motorcycle riders. Motorcycle accidents are the leading cause of death in the 15-35 year old bracket.
Removal of service lanes on either side of the road will increase conflict as the slow traffic entering and leaving the buildings along the road will have to come directly onto the signal free road, similarly there is no space for public transport stops and locations where alighting passengers or other pedestrians can safely cross the road.
The major bottleneck on the Main Boulevard is the liberty round about yet the signal free corridor does not address this at all, an important junction design parameter is a volume to capacity ratio (v/c), as this approaches one the congestion increases by a factor of ten (logarithmic scale) as drivers in severely congested situations behave irrationally
The major bottleneck on the Main Boulevard is the liberty round about yet the signal free corridor does not address this at all, an important junction design parameter is a volume to capacity ratio (v/c), as this approaches one the congestion increases by a factor of ten (logarithmic scale) as drivers in severely congested situations behave irrationally. The signals at Main Market and Zahoor Ilahi road help provide the necessary break for the vehicles in liberty round about to disperse before the next wave of traffic hits, by eliminating these traffic lights the vehicles will speed all the way to liberty round about before getting snarled into a traffic jam. It’s a like a water pipe with a constriction that the volume of water that will go through will be governed by the constriction regardless of the size of the pipe upstream. Therefore a logical design would have first addressed the congestion at liberty round about first, but then who cares about logic.
Before embarking on expensive infrastructure projects, it is customary to spend at least a year studying options and seeing how these fit within the overall city master plan, as it is the master planners that dictate the transportation plan and not the other way round, as well as the long term implication as to how they inform the growth of the city for the next thirty years, our rulers who are accustomed to driving in their own transport are increasingly ignoring the concept of “livable city”, discriminate against motorcycle riders and users of public transport, the environment is being damaged and precious resources wasted on ill-conceived projects that in the end may have limited benefits. In his book Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher Caesar, wrote “Public works should be only based on the concept of common good and justice and not for the rulers’ profit, popularity or pleasure”. Why is it so difficult almost two thousand years later to understand that basic concept?
