CTPL uses misleading survey to boast about performance

Survey is based on only 50 contributors residing in city with population of around 11.126 million people

LAHORE: The World Traffic Index 2019 survey by Numbeo, a private organisation that ranks each city by their traffic conditions, has been used by City Traffic Police Lahore (CTPL) to project improved performance in the provincial capital’s traffic conditions.

The survey is based on only 50 contributors residing in a city with a population of around 11.126 million people. The survey placed Lahore in 83rd position on the Index. In the same survey, Karachi ranked 63rd based on only 73 contributors.

Data Journalist and Founder of Data Stories Pakistan Khalid Khattak commented on the issue and said that while we cannot doubt a ‘statistical analysis’ by Numbeo, the data collection process is unreliable as far as Pakistan is concerned. “There are multiple factors including sample size, computer literacy and data literacy that need to be taken into account. One cannot simply agree to any conclusion if data is unreliable.

Besides the issue of fewer contributors, the fact that only two major roads of the provincial capital have traffic wardens actually deployed on the spot needs to be highlighted. Congestion points vary in different parts of the city and in some areas, traffic flow is a daily problem.

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The website of Numbeo claimed that the data available on their website is based on perceptions of online visitors and collected over the past three years. Interestingly, the ranking of Lahore is only available from the years of 2017-19.

Earlier, Lahore Police had used this data by Numbeo to project its previous positions and the perceived improvement in traffic conditions. However, the ranking was also based on only 146 contributors. An observation of the ranking of Lahore and Karachi on World Crime Index by Numbeo over the last five years showed that both cities had drastically improved with each passing year. If the rankings are held to be true, the 2014 data, compared to the 2019 data, reveals that Karachi had improved 11 times while Lahore had improved three times over the last five years.

Interesting patterns were revealed after an analysis of this year’s traffic index by Numbeo of the city of Lahore and Karachi for last three years. The analysis showed that Lahore was ranked at 70th position and Karachi on 75th in the year 2017 after which Lahore’s mid-year ranking changed to 40th position while Karachi jumped to 64th position in mid-2017.

Similarly, in January 2018, Lahore ranked 52nd and Karachi ranked 46th. In mid-2018, Lahore jumped to the 31st position while Karachi reached 58th position. This year in January, Lahore was ranked 56th on the index while Karachi ranked 69th.

The CTPL not only owned the survey, but also claimed that the improvement of the provincial capital in the traffic index is owed to effective patrolling system, monitoring, checking through PSCA cameras, crackdowns against encroachments, transparency in licensing and challan system and the adoption of a zero tolerance policy for one-way traffic and wrong parking.

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In an earlier statement, a CTPL official said that traffic management in Lahore is better when compared to cities such as Los Angeles, Moscow, Shanghai, Toronto, Sydney, Istanbul and London, as revealed by the Numbeo survey.

However, Lahore lags behind in traffic management when compared to cities in Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Germany.

Furthermore, The Express Tribune learnt that anyone can participate in Numbeo’s survey. The website simply asks the user to sign up using an e-mail address. Reportedly, a scribe residing in the provincial capital participated in the traffic survey for Karachi. 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2019.