Fleeting moments The Punjab government has embarked on a road-rail building drive since it returned to power in the last election. In his pursuit, the CM Punjab brooks no criticism, shows little patience for rules and regulations, and wants things done come what may. One wishes him more speed, but some projects need a rethink – the Orange Line Metro Train, for instance. The Lahore High Court has stayed the metro-train project on the plea of some citizens whose houses were likely to come in the way of the Orange Line. It’s also feared that the train route would harm heritage sites and buildings such as Chauburji, GPO and the Shalimar Gardens. While it is unfair to criticise development projects just for the sake of criticism, it is incumbent upon the government to justify public spending on such projects. The huge expense incurred on such development projects is usually met out of the borrowed money that the coming generations have to pay. It is important, therefore, to undertake projects that benefit a large segment of the population. Moreover, the city of Lahore shouldn’t seem to be the only city of progress. When the Punjab government focuses on the Orange Train project and signal-free corridors, it seems to ignore the daily bedlam on Multan Road from the Motorway overhead bridge to Chung – a stretch of about five kilometres. There are two lanes on each side of the median; and they remain choked with traffic day and night. Then there’s a bus stand to which buses have no direct access. The long-body buses take an arduous U-turn at the Shahpur Road cut to travel back to enter the bus stand, which causes a traffic chaos. Many buses, instead of taking U-turns, disembark passengers in front of the NHA office and Motorway Police Kiosk. The passengers cross the main road to reach the bus stand. It is a sad sight to see cleaners of the buses jostling hapless passengers towards vehicles parked in the bus stand. Elderly passengers often stand on the thin median for traffic to pass before walking to the bus stand. One wishes the CM Punjab takes note of this. After all, these bus passengers are as good citizens as the ones travelling and living along the signal-free zone in Gulberg. As if the odd location of the bus stand was not enough, the Punjab government established an animal market and slaughterhouse within a two-kilometre radius of the bus stand. Now the option to remedy the situation is to add two lanes each on both sides of Multan Road and provide easy access of buses to the bus stand. Improving the main exit and entry routes to the provincial capital is far more important than rebuilding and remodelling already developed neighbourhoods of the sprawling city. People think the Punjab government is more interested in constructing structures that are visible than developing those whose progress is not that visible or glamorous. For the sake of political point-scoring, widening roads and developing the metro bus and orange line train systems is far more helpful than, say, constructing hospitals or establishing universities. Nevertheless, the main problem of traffic congestion arises because of the complete failure of the traffic management system. The city’s roads are wide enough but ill-supervised by the traffic staff. A large majority of drivers, educated and uneducated alike, show neither courtesy nor civic sense when driving on the road. Here’s a daily sight: you’re driving on the canal bank road and suddenly the traffic comes to a halt. A long line of cars builds up. After about twenty minutes, cars begin to creep forward. You realise there was nothing holding up traffic other than an accident that had occurred on the opposite bank and that motorists in front of you had stopped just to watch the spectacle. Many of us seem to have all the time in the world to waste. The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. Email: pinecity@gmail.com
