IT seems that only men of learning are concerned with what happens around them. At 1100 hours on Sunday, April 24, the morning on which my second column on the complete mess that is the Clifton Cross was printed, I received an e-mail.

It was from Digbijoy [Banglacized ‘Digvijay’] Bhowmik, Assistant Director, Project Management and Coordination of the National Capital Region Planning Board of New Delhi, a young Indian architect with a Master’s qualification in town and country planning. He was so horrified (“unsettling to read”, as he put it) by my description of the lack of planning involved.

His initial remark was that the first article I had written on the subject (April 3) had left him “wondering if there were any qualified and capable individuals in Karachi for dealing with geometric designs for interchanges,” but that this second one had somewhat relieved his apprehensions as he understood that NESPAK had offered to alleviate the inherent geometric design flaws in the interchange.

He then proceeded to tell me how things work in Delhi. A complex interchange commissioned at the AIIMS crossing was designed through competitive bidding, and decisions as to what it can achieve in terms of balancing the number of conflict points and reducing time were taken entirely on the merits of the design. The Delhi interchange is a three-tier geometric design conceptualized by an architect who won a design competition called specifically for the project.

The appointed consultants came up with a minimally invasive four-year construction programme for the interchange at what is one of Delhi’s busiest intersections, with a single straight arm average daily traffic measuring up to 8,500 to 10,000 PCU per day.

Remarkably, throughout the entire construction period traffic was held up only in one arm of the interchange at any given time. Prior to the interchange, the intergreen period (the time taken between two cycles of the light to turn green) at the intersection was over four minutes and the average waiting time no less than three intergreen periods. Following its commissioning, there is no stopping or slowdown in any arm of the traffic. The saving in time, cost and fuel has been reduced considerably.

One important point : side by side with construction, strategic traffic planning took place to ensure that not just the access-ways would be managed but that the volume flowing along them would also be managed by relocating heavy traffic. According to young Digbijoy, “A single entity like an interchange or the Clifton Cross is not viable in the long run to alleviate congestion from a network. What is needed is a proper mechanism for monitoring the health of the urban transportation network which must be periodically supplemented through studies, surveys and gravity modelling of traffic ... At a time when the overlords of Karachi can be so generous as to grant a seventy-something-year-old city official an extension, that clearly shows the intentions to ‘find room’ for the man at whatever cost, should they not at least maintain a good inventory of traffic and transportation data?”

The clueless city administrators, in conjunction with the Karachi Port Trust go-getters (who have no business to be involved in the city road building business), are not only fiddling with our roads and making life miserable for millions through their myopic and careless approach to the construction works at the Clifton Cross, but they and the equally energetic Defence Housing Authority administrators also have grandiose plans for the Clifton beach, in the name of recreation for the people, and naturally at the cost of the people.

They intend reclaiming some of the land now covered by seawater containing some 99 per cent raw sewage, raising high-rise commercial and residential complexes and all that goes with them (scams), and, to top it all, they plan to have a jet d’eau (Geneva !) out in the middle of the sewage, near Oyster Rocks, that will cost a cool Rs.60,000 to operate for approximately five hours a day — and this in a country stricken with poverty, still not completely off the hock, and with an uncertain and somewhat rocky future.

Let us see what happens in a democratic country, when those who administer and care for a city decide to do good by its citizens. In 1988, in New York City (just over half the population of Karachi), Governor George Pataki signed into law legislation to create the Hudson River Park, stretching along the river from Battery Park to 59th Street in Manhattan, bringing to the Westside and to millions of New Yorkers a world class park. The Hudson River Park is intended to be to the 21st century what Central Park has been to the 20th century. A Hudson River Park Trust was set up, with a board of 13 directors. Meetings are held once every two months and are open to the public and are publicly noticed.

The legislation came after years of efforts by many citizens’ groups supported by the effective Mayor Rudi Guiliani whose aim was to transform the waterfront into a parkland with a five-mile esplanade featuring only recreational activities and restaurants. The Hudson River Park Act legislates essential park and habitat protection and ends the threat of expanding commercialization of the waterfront. It prohibits residential, warehousing, manufacturing, offices, hotels and gambling uses within the park area. It is a place where park-starved New Yorkers can breathe in fresh air, sit in the sun, help educate their children about the ecology and history of the Hudson. It is a place for running, playing, dancing, boating, or simply watching the boats sail by — a place for relaxing with family, friends and neighbours.

The granite esplanade brings the public close to the water, while town docks, boat houses, a beach and launches for canoes and kayaks allow people to touch or enter the water. On land, undulating green lawns and groves of trees will separate walkers from a bikeway, and ballfields are open to both children and adults. Thirteen rebuilt piers stretch into the river.

The Hudson River Park Act reserves the area exclusively for recreation and limits the types and locations of commercial activities — only food concessions and recreational (boating, an ecology centre, miniature golf, playgrounds, skate park, trapeze school, volleyball, etc). Every dollar made within the park will go right back into the park’s construction, maintenance and operations. The estimated cost is $ 330 million, State and City governments have committed $ 100 million each and the remainder comes from lease revenue and private fund-raising. The first section opened in 1999, and the projected date of completion is this year.

As for Karachi, this paragraph is dedicated to those of Nazimabad, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Golimar, Lyari and Soldier Bazaar who e-mail me to complain that I only try (unsuccessfully, I might add) to keep the Clifton side of Karachi orderly, habitable and clean. Correct — if all of us made some effort, rather than merely moaning, to look after our own onion patches we might perhaps succeed in bringing some sanity to this godforsaken city. Rather than complain to helpless me, they should get to the governor, the chief minister, the nazims and the head honchos of all the city utilities.

Today banners fly once again in Saddar proclaiming in Urdu that Roland deSouza and Amber Alibhai of SHEHRI and I, are ‘ghaire mulki’ who are trying to stop the development of Karachi. One must live with such nonsense.

Finally, back to the core issue, the Clifton Cross. Apparently, those irresponsibly responsible for the planning of the Cross have asked the designers, NESPAK, to resubmit an altered original design to allow for some 28 per cent of the traffic emanating from all four directions to turn right. May we hope that the newly inducted chief secretary of Sindh, Fazlur Rahman, will advise wisely.

E-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk