The roads are killing us – Newspaper

LAST week, the prime minister found time to inaugurate two flyovers in Islamabad. Despite the ‘live coverage’ on television, it wasn’t a news item that attracted much attention.

Most people were too busy discussing the judiciary, the failed attempt to sell PIA, or the smog in Lahore and the rest of Punjab, with the provincial capital topping pollution charts worldwide.

But as discussion focused on Lahore’s ranking and the filth that most urban residents in Pakis­tan inhale all year, a greyness also descended on Islamabad. By the end of the week, winter sunshine in the capital had disappeared, as had the clear views of the Margalla Hills.

While this is relatively new for Islamabad, it is not unfamiliar. An exceptionally dry spell the previous winter had covered our lives with similar dullness. In other words, the infamous smog has reached the capital too; it will stay until there is rain. True, Islamabad can’t compare with Lahore, but it’s a beginning. And we know how this story ends — in many shades of grey and no sun.

But what does this have to do with the prime minister’s presence at city events in Islamabad, some may wonder. Everything. For while we moan and groan about the poison the people breathe in, day in and day out, and discuss industrial pollution in cities and how the winds from India are to blame, the issue will not be addressed until we change the way we think. Cities cannot become concrete jungles of flyovers and interchanges for the comfort of cars and still ensure blue skies and clean air.

Politicians continue to be obsessed with brick-and-mortar projects, equating them with development and good governance. In this outdated worldview, roads, flyovers and interchanges are the cool kids of development projects. Modern-day Lahore is a testament to it; where concrete crept up on large parts of ‘elite’ Lahore — Gulberg, Liberty, Model Town, DHA. Roads were widened, signal-free corridors added, and when all else failed, flyovers were squeezed in so that cars could zip around.

In the process, the green areas were narrowed and even done away with altogether. Ask those who remember the green belt that made up the Gulberg Boulevard before it was shrunk, planted with palm trees, and the road widened. Few people might remember, but they may have noticed that the wide road is no longer enough for the traffic, which has grown exponentially since.

Cities cannot become concrete jungles of flyovers and interchanges and still have clean air.

As Kevin Costner once told us, build and they will come. What we in Pakistan did not and do not realise is that once roads are built, the cars will come; so many that the bigger roads will not be enough either. And with the traffic comes air pollution, which is the far bigger cause of the smog than winds from India.

The same solution/problem was imported to Islamabad during the Gen Musharraf years, when the avenues were widened needlessly. Needlessly because more than a decade after Musharraf has left, traffic in the city is still not enough to warrant these wide avenues. But we continue to build more roads, widen the existing ones, and build flyovers because traffic should whizz through a city the way it does on highways and motorways.

No one complains or protests because it suits the policymakers and the rich — the same people who will petition the courts about Monal, stone-crushing, and the sanctity of the Margalla Hills but never about the concrete that is conquering the city. Roads suit those who can afford cars, and hence it is easier to pretend this is not about the environment.

Roads, frankly, are a project for the rich and by the rich. Anyone living in Islamabad will realise this if they glance sideways, while whizzing down a wide road at 80 or 100 kilometres per hour. On either side, ordinary people stand, trying to figure out when they should run across without being run over; they have to run because there is no dignified way of crossing many roads.

The motorists may also notice, if they bothered to look, the people standing patiently at one end of the flyover, hoping for someone to slow down and offer them a lift to the other end. Because that flyover takes a car just seconds to traverse but a pedestrian much longer.

With no public transport and these highway-style roads in the middle of a city, the message for everybody is that a car or a motorbike is essential for life. Without one, the city doesn’t work for you. How can it, for while cars require four- to six-lane roads, people are told to climb up sky-high stairs to cross a road because pedestrian crossings are for the convenience of the motorists.

These pedestrian bridges are surely a desi invention, because never have I seen one in big Western cities where the traffic moves slowly so that people can walk. Indeed, in the rest of the world, urban planners are ripping out flyovers and big roads, thus restricting traffic. But Pakistan continues to move in a different direction. In fact, our idea of public transport also begins with roads. Before the bus is even purchased, roads are built for it.

This hits one all the more in Islamabad, because the capital was conceived as a 15-minute city. Take a close look at any of the older parts of town and it’s evident: the small parks are easily located and wide pedestrian walkways (despite the generators and security guard room encroachments) and small markets are included in every sub-sector, ensuring that a grocery story is within walking distance of every house. Move further away to the newer sectors and most of these amenities are missing; but big roads and the dust are ever-present.

This did become a bit of a rant. But as a layperson, I don’t know how else to say that Pakistani citizens will not enjoy the luxury of clean air till there is an overhaul of our development model and city planning. Dirty air cannot be fixed via piecemeal efforts.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024