New plan yet to be implemented on Sharae Faisal

The Express Tribune takes a ride along the newly-designated ‘model road’

KARACHI: The traffic police failed to implement its plan to turn one of the city's main arteries, Sharae Faisal, into a 'model road' on Monday.

Traffic DIG Amir Ahmed Shaikh announced last week that 132 cops will be deployed from Monday onwards on Sharae Faisal to make it a model road, where there will be zero tolerance for any kind of traffic violation and all sorts of heavy vehicles will be barred from plying on the road. It was also decided that signboards and banners on salient features of the 'model roads' will be put up.



According to the plan, public buses are supposed to run in the left-most lanes, with motorcycles in the middle lanes and cars on the fast track, which is the right-most lane. More than two people travelling on one motorcycle will be fined and both the driver and rider will have to wear helmets, including women and children, under the Motor Vehicle Ordinance clause 89-A.

However, on Monday morning, the implementation of none of these rules from the new plan was visible on the artery, while no banner or signboards were put up by traffic police. A resident of Shah Faisal Colony, Muhammad Danish, who crosses the entire Sharae Faisal to reach his office in Saddar every day, told The Express Tribune that he only saw a few traffic policemen at the Drigh Road traffic signal. He added that heavy vehicles, including water tankers, were also seen on the thoroughfare, before Baloch Colony Flyover. Other than this, no marking of lanes was done to make Sharae Faisal a model road like it was planned while public buses were seen moving on the right-most lanes.



Meanwhile, according to Saddar Traffic section officer Mehtab Ali, a proper traffic police force has been deployed from Hotel Metropole till the airport. He said that they are making sure no commercial vehicle plies on the right-most lanes. Their recovery vans, according to him, are also deployed along the artery. "One should not expect the results overnight," he said, adding that a proper flow of traffic will be observed in a week or more.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2016.