It now seems a faraway dream that once Lahore, like all other urban cities of the world, had a reliable public transport system. For those who remember the double-decker buses of yore, it was always on time and followed a schedule, even if empty.

The reality is that Pakistan is probably the only country in the world where its major cities do not have any public transport. This is testimony to the utter failure of all past governments. In other words, the people have never mattered to politicians and bureaucrats alike.

Without mobility a society cannot progress as any sociologist and economist will tell you. The solution the hapless population had come up with was to move about on motorcycles. Today, Lahore alone has over 4.3 million registered motorcycles, with the Punjab Police in January claiming that another 100,000 are unregistered. In terms of households, it means two motorcycles per household of seven persons. Their lethal visibility every person driving a car, or trying to cross the road, knows full well.

But then this was never true in the past. After Partition, among the very first things Mr Jinnah ordered was the setting up of the Lahore Omnibus Service, known popularly as the LOS. Jinnah assigned Mr Zulfiqar Taha, a former London bus driver-cum-engineer, to set up the company and import 500 Bedford double-decker and single-decker chassis and engines only. He was acutely aware of the severe financial crunch Pakistan faced. He ordered that they build the bus bodies in Lahore. So at the Ferozepur Road LOS depot a major operation started and a very impressive 500 double-decker buses soon came onto the roads.

Read: HARKING BACK: When Lahore had a Victoria and an omnibus service

The success of the LOS is legendary. It was making large profits and improving and expanding. Sadly, in 1958 the military took over the country. The LOS had accumulated a huge cash surplus and was also the biggest tax-payer in Lahore. Mr Taha was eventually dismissed after persistently refusing to lend the company’s funds to the ‘government’. Army personnel were recruited and soon the entire LOS system rusted and crumbled.

Over the years, three major attempts have been made. One by Mr ZA Bhutto, who purchased Volvo buses from Sweden that soon began to rust as spare parts were not available. Then Nawaz Sharif’s Punjab government sought to let the private sector use mini-buses. These did initially make a difference, but then also collapsed. The latest attempt has been made by Shahbaz Sharif and his Chinese-assisted Metro bus service with only 45 buses, which are still functioning. This Metro bus service caters to only 0.02 per cent of the population.

The building of a Chinese-assisted Orange Line Metro Train, even if allegedly at a high interest rate, at least accepts one basic internationally accepted fact of urban transportation, and that is that in huge cities like Lahore and Karachi, a combination of urban road transport and rail transport, preferably underground, can meet the needs of growing cities.

Read: Why the Orange Line Metro Train in Lahore is highly controversial

The problems and strategies of urban transport planning, coupled with a severe financial crunch, and also guarding against the dangers of an ‘impossible’ financial liability like the Orange Line train and the Metro bus fiasco, makes introducing reasonable public urban transportation a dicey proposition. But then it has to be done, and done in such a way that the project is transparent, locally financed with a creative configuration at very low rates, and a broad plan for the next 15 years, irrespective of who governs.

One expert of Pakistani origin in Cambridge has suggested to the current government that besides locally-manufactured buses on the roads, Lahore should slowly start work on a locally-financed and engineered underground rail system. A 15-year time span has been suggested. A combination of the two will see the Punjab capital as a vibrant and mobile city. The suggestion includes a few specialised researches in traffic flows, automobile engineering choices and financial flow studies.

Two of Britain’s top transport economists at Cambridge University have been part of the proposal put forward. They also suggest not accepting any foreign money so as to set an example on how to innovate and engineer solutions to our problems. The catch is just where will they find an honest CEO and CFO?

The real news is that when this proposal was forwarded to Lahore’s transport bureaucrats, they rejected it. No one was willing to meet the Cambridge team even if they came over at their own expense. Their unofficial comments were amazing. In the past, a Japan International Cooperation Agency research on bus traffic was undertaken, the report and files of which lie in the locked cupboards of Lahore Development Agency’s traffic office. One only hopes that very soon it does not catch fire.

The last government set up the Lahore Transport Company. Its accounts, as available on the internet, show zero depreciation, yet it claims to have 650 buses. This is a puzzle that even the best British chartered accountant and professor has been unable to understand. If the buses are available then they should be used for an immediate launch. Beyond buses there is a need to create an underground train research unit, the proposal suggests, and work within a small budget.

The number of buses and trains in a city is just one indicator of mobility. For example, New Delhi has a population of 18.6 million with 6,548 buses (2018) and a growing underground train system. This comes to approximately 2,840 persons per bus now supplemented by a growing underground train system. London has a population of 8.9 million, with another 1.1 million coming in to work daily, with 8,210 buses and one of the oldest (150 years) and most extensive underground train (Tube) systems covering the entire inner and outer London.

Mind you, most London buses are double-decker having a high number of seats. On a seat per single-decker calculation it comes to 850 people per bus plus their tube trains. Moscow has a population of 12.9 million with 10,500 buses and electric trams and an 82-year-old underground train system covering the entire city. This comes to approximately 1,228 persons per bus and tram.

Lahore has a population of 11.13 million with only 240 private buses, 41 Metro buses and no public transport buses. The city has no dedicated urban train service or underground system. This comes to an appalling 60,000 persons per bus.

The Cambridge proposal points out that population clusters need to be studied and mobility planned accordingly. It points out that Pakistani cities have a high percentage of low median age people, who are all highly mobile, no wonder so many motorcycles. If a public transport ratio of 2,000 urban persons per bus is planned to be achieved within the next 15 years, then that will mean, given the high growth rate, by 2035 the number needed will rise to over 55,000 buses. That is why underground trains are critical in the mobility equation.

A simple progression equation given current numbers means that Pakistan will have to add 7.5pc more buses every year to the preceding year’s number to be able to achieve even a 2,000 buses per person ratio in 15 years — that is 2035.

The proposal states that in the two main populated cities of Karachi and Lahore, there will be an urgent need to start work on underground train systems. With an efficient over-ground transport system, coupled with an equally efficient and speedy underground transport system, Pakistan’s urban transport problems will be considerably alleviated, though still under stress.

Within the parameters of this reality, which way will the current government go? Will Lahore ever find another dedicated genius like Zulfiqar Taha, driven as he was by an honest leader like Muhammad Ali Jinnah? The answer to that everyone in Lahore knows.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2019