Insane closure of roads can cause death

LAHORE

Closing busy city roads for development work without installing any road safety signs as well as informing the citizens has now become a norm in the provincial metropolis, which is resulting in accidents as well as clogging several other main city roads-but who cares.

Closure of Jail Road underpass is the latest example of this fact as it was closed down for all kinds of traffic on the last Friday night while the contractor of this project didn’t bother to install any reflective diversion signs as well as other road safety measures such as placement of orange cones, deployment of staff to inform commuters that road was closed ahead.

On Friday night, senior journalist and Chief Reporter The News Syed Mayed Ali had a serious accident at the entry point of the underpass when his motorcycle hit sacks full of sand placed on the Canal Bank Road to stop commuters’ entry. The accident took place because there was no diversion sign, no reflecting light and no other intimation.

Recently, a high-level meeting held at the Traffic Engineering and Planning Agency (TEPA) admitted that majority of city roads were lacking road safety signs. The meeting decided that road dividers of all the underpasses on the Canal Bank Road would be reconstructed and Cat Eyes would be installed around them to give proper guidance to the commuters.

Besides this, vital sign boards, which are missing or broken at various places including underpasses, will be installed or replaced. New traffic signboards providing guidance to the commuters will be installed at all the major crossings, officials maintained. Broken or missing signboards before U-turns on major city roads will also be replaced or fixed whereas zebra crossings will also be repainted. Reflecting Tape of traffic guidance signs at underpasses will also be replaced as at many points it has reduced its illuminating effects.

Canal Bank Road, which is one of the most important arteries, is already facing an overload of traffic due to ongoing construction work of Orange Line in the city and closure of Jail Road underpass has increased the mess on all the nearby roads such as Jail Road, The Mall, Zafar Ali Road, Gulberg, Shadman, Shah Jamal and Ferozepur Road.

Similarly, the contractors working on Orange Line Metro Train at Multan Road and GT Road have not installed proper diversion signs and reflecting lights at important crossings and junctions, which are connecting with these two main roads. On the other hand, the World Health Organisation said in its report that Pakistan was not promoting any road safety polities which led to road injuries while claiming many lives. The report said in Pakistan there were no policies, which separated road users and protected road users, especially cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians.

Road traffic injuries are currently estimated to be the ninth leading cause of deaths across all the age groups globally and are predicted to become the seventh leading cause of deaths by 2030. This rise is driven by the escalating death toll on roads in low and middle income countries, particularly in emerging economies where urbanisation and motorisation accompanied rapid economic growth.

Following traffic jams, citizens have to spend extra time as well as fuel on the roads as vehicles on busy roads continue to crawl the whole day causing nuisance to the commuters. The situation at peak hours appears to be horrible with complete traffic jams on almost every major road.

During various interviews, a large number of citizens asked a simple question from city planners that who would be responsible in case of an accident/death caused due to absence of road safety measures. But when the scribe contacted the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and City District Government Lahore (CDGL), both refused to own the ongoing construction work at Jail Road underpass.

LDA’s spokesman Suhail Janjua claimed that he himself asked Chief Engineer LDA Israr Saeed about the project who told him that the LDA had nothing to do with the project while on the other hand DCO Lahore Capt (Retd) Usman said the CDGL had not awarded the contract of construction work of this underpass to anyone. Now we can say that some contractor has suddenly started upgrading the underpass out of courtesy.