Understanding encroachments and congestion – Ahmad Rafay Alam

“If only we could remove the encroachments on our roads,” I am told every so often, “we wouldn’t have the traffic congestion we see today.” “Why aren’t the local governments,” I am asked equally often, “doing their jobs and removing them?” “Remember the days,” some wax nostalgic, “when Chief Minister So-and-So didn’t bow to the encroachment mafia and took action without fear or favour.”

Such wishful thinking is common. It is also unfounded. Getting a local government truck and filling it with the push-carts and kiosks of roadside vendors is only a temporary means of combating encroachments and delivering us from congestion. The failure of repeated anti-encroachment drives proves this point. No matter what strategy is adopted by local governments burdened with the responsibility of removing encroachments, they keep on springing up, like Hercules’ Lernaean Hydra.

Why don’t these measures work? It’s because they betray fundamental misunderstandings of the factors which cause encroachments. One means of grasping this issue and comprehending it is if we turn to some of the economic aspects of encroachments.

Most of us are familiar with encroachments. They are rehris and khokhas that line the busy streets in our cities. In some cases, shops encroach onto the footpath or road in front of them by using that space as part of the store. They eat up sidewalks and stand dangerously close to the sides of major traffic arteries. Because encroachments act as clogs in free flow of these arteries, they are commonly held responsible for the traffic congestion that plague our urban areas. (This is another ridiculous notion as it completely ignores the role played by the hundreds upon hundreds of newly leased cars that are injected to the already overburdened traffic infrastructure every day!)

The law recognises an encroachments as the illegal use of public land, like a street or park. This is a better definition as it frees the understanding of this phenomenon from something done only in busy commercial areas, and that too mainly to sell food or hawk convenience items. Encroachments are the illegal use of public land and, as such, can take many other forms. Many are familiar land usages and have never been thought of encroachments.

Take, for example, a private school situated in a residential area. The need for a school in such a location stems not only from a desire to provide education to those nearby but also from the failure of urban planners to provide for adequate numbers of schools at the time of thinking up and launching the residential scheme. In Lahore’s Gulberg, a residential housing scheme launched by the Lahore Improvement Trust around 1960 and now managed by its successor, the Lahore Development Authority, there are only a handful of plots originally designated for use as schools. The framers of the Gulberg scheme completely overlooked the needs of future residents. Where would the children who didn’t gain admission to Aitchison and the Convent go? Equally importantly, where would the children of the many servants who worked in the houses of the wealthy be educated?

Of course, schools located in residential areas never really start after getting planning permission. But at some point, the demands of parents unable to find a nearby school would have been taken up by the LDA and, for politically expedient reasons (politicians dream of taking credit for the establishment of a school), the rules restricting land use would have been bent and a school allowed in the residential area.

Because it takes just one case to set precedent, we now have a Gulberg where it is impossible to locate a single street that doesn’t have a school or educational institution located on it. And because the residential area wasn’t designed to cope with land being used for so many schools, traffic in the once leafy residential at school timing is now forever congested. At the same time, schools in residential areas, almost all being privately owned, are the source of great income and profit.

Gulberg was launched in the 1960s but we haven’t learnt from the urban planning lessons it teaches us. Even though it can now be taken as given that schools operating out of homes located in residential areas are a form of encroachment adding to traffic congestion, the LDA continues not to provide adequate plotting in its newly launched schemes for use as schools or educational institutions. Nor has anyone in the local government figured out that the profits of the business of education can be taxed so that the revenue raised can be spent on public transport or at the very least better parking facilities.

If the economic perspective of this type of encroachment isn’t clear, take the example of the parking. For apartment buildings and commercial office space, the LDA’s bye-laws stipulate one car parking space (8 feet by 16 feet) for every 1,000 square feet of covered area. Forget the fact that these stipulations date back to 1984, when the number of automobiles in Lahore was insignificant compared to today, from the point of view of a building developer, such a stipulation means a restriction on how much land can be allocated for commercial — and hence, profitable — use. What has happened in so many cases is that, in order to maximise the returns on their investment and often in connivance with the LDA, building owners overlook even minimum parking requirements when raising their structures. When looked at from an economic perspective, the property developer is actually getting his property on the cheap: By not paying for the extra land needed to provide adequate parking or by not paying for the construction of an underground parking facility, he is saving costs and increasing profit.

When such highrise building are completed and occupied, the lack of parking leads to congestion as building users are forced to park on the road in front of the structure. Shortly, thereafter, a local government sub-contractor appears with a grubby parking stub and asks you for Rs10 each time you park your car.

When will we realise that by paying for this parking fee, it us — the general public — that is paying for the property developer’s evasion of LDA parking regulations. The Rs10 we pay to park represents the money saved by the property developer in not paying for proper parking facilities. But at the same time, it is the property developer who is also enjoying the rents and incomes of his building. Talk about having your cake, eating it too and having others pay for it!

We need to understand that encroachments and congestion are not superficial urban problems. They can’t be eliminated with anti-encroachment drives. We must understand where the encroachment and congestion begins. In the cases I’ve outlined, school-owners and property developers are responsible along with the LDA. It is now time for local government — all of which have the power to charge fees and impose taxes on land usage and zoning — to pass bye-laws that go after the people who not only encroach but make money while doing so.

The writer is an advocate of the high court and a member of the adjunct faculty at LUMS. He has an interest in urban planning. Email: ralam@ nexlinx.net.pk
Courtesy: The News, 24/3/2008