Any update of Shahra e Faisal guys?

I got message from a friend “Babu karsaaz pay sindhi jaama hoona shroo hoo gaee hain”

3:12 PM Got another message from a friend “18 October 2007 Sanayha Karsaz kay silsalay may
Aaj sham 5pm say 2am tuk shahrah-e-faisal Drig road bridge say lay kur shaheed millat flyover tuk bund rahay ge”

I hope people understand how important it is to make their kids follow safety rules while traveling in a car , which means the kids have to be seated on the passenger seat of the car with the seat-belt on and keep their head and arms inside the vehicle at all time during the travel.

Disruption of traffic is expected on Dr. Zia Uddin Ahmed Road, Club Road and near PIDC house between 1600 to 1800 hrs. Everyone are advised to avoid the above mentioned areas during the stated timing.

Nah, I wouldn’t really say that. Its much too dirty and overcrowded to be compared to elegant places like those. If I get any foreign visitors, I will definitely keep them the hell away from Tariq Road. So why has it really become like that? I remember when I was young, the name Tariq road used to bring to mind images of a very lively shopping scene. Now when I think of it, I only think of horrible traffic jams, broken roads, pollution, noise, and wayy too many people with nowhere to move.

And garbage on the medians?

I think our city government really forgot about this golden road. Oft trodden, but now forgotten. In the span of the past few years, the CDGK has carried out remarkable development activity in Karachi – something no other government could ever achieve – however it really needs to be reminded about the plight of this road before the current setup gets brushed aside and somebody incompetent ends up taking its place. There is much to be fixed here, and some of it can easily be done. However once done, it will make the shopping experience at Tariq road something to talk about once again. Here are a few suggested improvements:

• Re-carpet the entire stretch of the road. The current road condition is very grating. The older carpeting had been greatly destroyed. There are holes, rubbly stretches, places to test your off-roading skills etc. all to be found in close vicinity of each other. Re-carpeting will make the road more drivable, pleasant, and will ease the traffic jams a little. And no, patch fixing will not help.
• Make proper high sidewalks on both sides of the road, and repair the median. This is essential as both are broken beyond recognition, and both are in urgent need of repair. In the case of sidewalks, I think it would be almost a first time construction other than the sidewalks created by the mall builders themselves.
• Build big parking plazas on the back streets of every block, and prohibit parking on the main road. Now this is a very lofty aim and I think it will not be accomplished easily – if ever. It must also be made obligatory for every new building / mall to construct underground or above ground parking floors to accomodate the amount of cars they aim to attract. For shopkeepers and shoppers alike. They should be allowed to charge for it so they can recover their building expenses.

Chaos theory originated here.

• Make lots of pedestrian bridges along the whole stretch of the road, 2-3 per block, and screen off pedestrian use of the main road using decorated iron grills.
• Make sidewalk zones where street vendors can display their wares easily and away from obstruction. However, the street vendors should be allowed to stay at Tariq road to maintain its ambience.
• Have a proper garbage collection system set up. (— well actually all of Karachi would benefit from that).

Now I may be dreaming here with making all these extraordinarily wonderful suggestions, however due to the excellent performance of CDGK over the past few years, I am pretty sure it can accomplish this if it sets its mind on the task. Maybe send a link to Mustafa Kamal? I am sure however, that once this work is accomplished, this street will once again be able to regain the reigns of the Karachi shopping experience.

Say what?

Today’s tirade is about the Gizri flyover. This flyover has been under construction since God-knows-when…. actually since over the past two and a half years. In this meantime, CDGK started and finished about a gagillion flyovers all over the city. Whereas, the DHA and the Cantonment board… slowly and steadily… kept hammering away at their only masterpiece – the Gizri flyover.

Since it falls on my daily route, I had been wishing and hoping that it would be opened soon so it could help the bottleneck that is the Punjab-chowrangi to Altamash hospital road, and then lo and behold — it seemed like the flyover had been completed by November. However, only now did the long wait for its final opening started. Maybe the DHA was waiting for some Big Thing to come open it, however that never materialized and we kept on waiting and waiting and waiting.

Suddenly, like a nuclear bomb, there was news in DAWN one fine morning that the Sindh High Court slapped some notices on to the authrities responsible for the flyover (read the story here). The very next day, the flyover had been opened. Take THAT DHA! There seems to be still a lot of commentary going on about whether this flyover was necessary or not or whether it could have been redesigned, and lots of old hags ragging on and on about hating this flyover, however, if you are a regular user of this road and live anywhere around the DHA area, or even if you are just looking for a bypass for the punjab-chowrangi to Altamash hospital bottleneck, you would have really breathed a sigh of relief.

Going up on this flyover, I literally feel like I have left my troubles behind. All the traffic jams and nightmares seem to evaporate into oblivion as I glide my way above the congested buildings of Gizri. Below it seems like a battlefield. Still alive with noise and dust kicking up into the air. I fly over it and descend smoothly at the Saudi embassy intersection. All my traffic woes (well at least the major ones), left for posterity. This is one GOOD GOOD GOOD work done. And one which was utterly necessary. However, why is it necessary to wait so long for good things to happen from DHA?

End note:

Even though this flyover is complete and is an absolute relief in terms of traffic issues, a lot of things about it are still FAR from complete. DHA still needs to get their a$$es moving fast and finish out the levelling and carpeting of the side roads under and beneath the flyover. Those side roads still have a lot of utility with a major hardware market being located there, and its destroyed condition is really a big headache still for Gizri residents and DHA residents who pass by there everyday. Also, now there is a big chance that major traffic congestion will start occurring at the Saudi Embassy intersection. How about building an underpass there too?