QUICK question: how do you get around Islamabad if you don’t have access to a private vehicle or a ridesharing app? If you already know that there is no answer to this, then you understand the capital’s overwhelming dependence on automobiles, and the recent announcement of simultaneously constructing five parking plazas in the city by the new and enthusiastic CDA administration will not have come as a surprise.

To some, the decision to build such plazas is a practical solution to the increasing congestion in commercial areas, especially during business hours. Instead of contesting this lived reality, it’s important to ask the bigger questions of why we continue to build our cities around cars and are adamant not to learn lessons from failed experiments.

Contemporary wisdom from all over the world tells us that facilitating cars is a slippery slope. In other words, there is no amount of lane expansion, highways, underpasses or parking plazas which will permanently solve traffic congestion in cities (local case in point: Lahore), because these have always only added more cars by perpetuating a vicious cycle of vehicular dependency. It’s no news that cars take up a disproportionate amount of space in cities and are the most inefficient means of transport available. Vacant parking lots are perhaps even more notorious, with no lessons learnt from the two empty plazas in F-7, which cost hundreds of millions of rupees and are now used as lavatories.

At the rate the larger Islamabad metropolitan area is expanding, reliance on private cars means we can expect a choked and smoky gridlock which no amount of jarring overhead passes will be able to address. Besides being a planning nightmare, this has two further impacts. First, the environmental consequences: much concrete in roads and parking plazas — and the number of cars driving on these — creates an urban heat island effect which Pakistan’s climate realities simply cannot cope with. Second, the economic implications of rising car and fuel prices are making this a particularly unattractive scenario.

Reliance on private cars in Islamabad means we can expect a choked, smoky gridlock.

Enter the three saviours of urban interconnectivity: walkability, cycling and public transport. Ever since the US model of urbanism has deservedly fallen off its concrete pedestal, cities all over the world are understanding the importance of inclusive planning models, instead of being accessible to a few and jarring for many. Former critics of the ‘unsuitability’ of such models in bustling South Asian cities are fast realising that it is far less impracticable than every individual owning and driving a car. Islamabad, in particular, as a new and planned city, provides a great opportunity to test this.

The inauguration of three new bus services in the capital last year — the orange, blue and green lines — is indeed a laudable step. However, by focusing only on linking the outskirts to the urban core, and not providing any mobility within the latter, the bus network of Islamabad falls short by a long way. A plan to add 13 urban routes remains suspended for now — and even then, is being conceptualised along the same fixed corridor model as previous metro buses rather than a grid system running along all the city’s arteries. Meanwhile, bicycle lanes are mostly non-existent and the addition of a few bicycle stands to the commercial areas is little more than a tokenistic exercise. The pedestrian network in Islamabad is nearly as dismal, with patched footpaths often trailing off into main roads or hitting dead ends.

So what will we do with all that in­­frastructure bud­get? Perhaps we could borrow a leaf from the fa­­m­ous Bogota mayor, Enrique Peñalosa, and pour these funds into creating infrastructure which incentivises pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit, instead of drivers. And what will we do with all the extra space not afforded to parking plazas? Perhaps we can ask the thousands of Islamabad residents living in a state of permanent limbo in slums between the concrete.

The questions of transport, housing, water, energy and the climate are far more interlinked than policymakers currently acknowledge. But, of course, the biggest elephant in the room comes down to decision-making and who these policymakers are in the first place. As long as a non-representative bureaucratic institution is in charge of running Islamabad’s affairs, instead of an empowered local government, the physical city will mirror a mindset which sees the addition of cars, roads and all their associated paraphernalia as symbols of progress and prosperity.

The writer is a specialist in local governance and urban sustainability.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2023