Moving people to suburbs doesn’t help Karachi traffic: study

Daily Times Monitor
KARACHI:

Transportation infrastructure in Karachi is mainly benefiting the high to middle class and moving people out to the suburbs doesn’t ease traffic congestion as their jobs are located in the middle of the city. These observations and others have been made in a paper titled ‘Urban transportation and equity: A case study of Beijing and Karachi’ by Intikhab Ahmed Qureshi, Lu Huapu and Yea Shi that was made available online Aug 7. Daily Times brings you some excerpts from the paper.

The dense structure of cities in China and Pakistan encourage the use of public transport and non-motorized transport (NMT). These are the most sustainable and affordable modes of transport for low income and urban poor. This would also suffice the requirement of about 10% and 22% of population in China and Pakistan, respectively, that are below the poverty line. In contrast to compact structure and mixed land use characteristics the cities in both countries are following the western model of urban sprawl and are modernizing their transportation infrastructure by developing highways, expressways and a rapid transit system.

In Karachi, planners are undertaking these glamorous projects while completely ignoring the local circumstances, feasibility, demographic facts and long-term effects of these projects. Such development favors a minority of premium mode users over a majority who prefer walking, biking and a conventional transit system and hence fails to meet the requirement of a sustainable and equitable transportation system. An equitable transportation system is one whose costs are paid by those who benefit and does not disproportionately favor or deny transportation improvements to certain demographic populations. Karachi’s population is only 9% of the national population but contributes a large proportion to the GDP. Over 70% of business services and about half of the retail trade and personal services are located in the Central Business District (CBD). About 50% of the employment in the wholesale trade and transportation sector is in the CBD.

Since 1947, Karachi has seen 35-fold increases in its population and almost 16-fold increases in spatial expansion. About 50% of the total population resides in slums. The urban transportation system of Karachi and Beijing is mainly road based. Karachi’s road network in 2004 was 7,400 km with 0.5 m/capita length of road. The increase in income, living standards and travel distance stimulates the desire for more comfortable, convenient and flexible personal vehicles (automobiles and motorcycles). In Karachi, total vehicles, automobiles and motorcycles are growing at an annual rate of 4.6%, 6.5% and 5.1%.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan banks have loaned and financed US$0.37 billion during the last half of 2004 for automobiles which is 2.5 times higher than the loans released for houses. As per one estimate the average travel time for work trips in Karachi is approximately over 45 min whereas in Beijing more than an hour is required to commute to work. In Karachi, though the total number of motorized trips generated increased the trip per person decreased by 38% between 1976 and 2004 along with a 10.3% decrease in the share of public transport and 14.3% increase in the share of private/para transit whereas the share of walk/bike has no statistical data.

The alarming law and order situation, absence of NMT environment and bad transportation system are some of the reasons for the declining trip per person. There was a time in Karachi when walking and cycling used to have a share of 60% in mode split and 40% out of them were related to work trips. Public transport’s share is decreasing but still maintains over 50% of the mode share, indicating that in the absence of NMT modes the low income group has no other option. This road-based public transport system is mostly in the hands of a private sector with very little public sector involvement. Buses/minibuses constitute only 2% of the total passenger vehicle fleet but serve more than half of the passenger demand. Nevertheless it receives no preferential treatment in terms of dedicated lanes or traffic management. The existing public transport system is not capable of meeting the increasing travel demand primarily because of infrequency of buses, limited hours of service and shortage of routes and vehicles. The number of vehicles and lines in operation are much lower than the actual demand. Out of 403 lines only 219 are functionally operating.

Moreover, the deficiency in vehicle fleet is due to the fact that a majority of Karachi’s urban public transport (69%) comprises low capacity (27/32 seater) mini buses/coaches. Due to this fleet deficiency, the ratio of available seat capacity on public transport to population in Karachi is 1:40 as compared to 1:12 in Mumbai.The low transportation expenses in Beijing supports the heavy reliance of residents on walking and biking, whereas in Karachi low income groups are the residents of peripheral slums and employed in the informal sector and mainly work at home, thereby fewer trips are made by public transit. The increasing urban sprawl makes walking and biking trips impossible. If all the 120 trips/household are to be made by public transport then the bottom quintile group of Karachi has to spend 17% of its discretionary income on public transit. The recent efforts to ease traffic congestion, by building wider roads, flyovers, elevated expressways, are unlikely to ease traffic congestion in the long run. Sustainable and equitable development of urban transportation needs to place a priority on the development of integrated urban transportation system with the public transport as the core.

Rapid transit system can not mitigate surface congestion and no where in the world that such transit system has eliminated the surface congestion at its own. Buses besides preferred by the most indigent segment still remain a very important mode of any large urban transportation system and carries invariably larger traffic load but despite that do not get the preferential treatment in investment, dedicated lanes and traffic management. What is required is to prioritize these buses by increasing their speed through dedicated lanes, priority at signals and by providing environmentally friendly buses coupled with reliability and quality. It is estimated that complete rehabilitation of the system by Pakistan Railways need an investment of US$0.092 billion and that too would be recovered within 30 years by offering a very reasonable and affordable fare of US$ 0.1–0.13 per trip.

In contrast if the same project is constructed on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis the cost of one trip would be US$ 0.27–0.33 which is beyond the affordability of the urban poor even if subsidized. The technologically advanced modes and infrastructures (rail based mass transit and bus rapid transit) though very efficient being high capacity and sustainable from energy and environmental point of view but are usually been developed by private consortium and the costs of these projects tend to be significantly higher and have to offer higher fare for quality operation and service. The most indigent segment of the society cannot afford to pay the cost of these premium modes. Without a major government subsidy, the fare will be much higher than that of bus transport, which is beyond the affordability of indigent segment. At one time non-motorised modes had a share of 60% in the mode split of Karachi.