Underpasses can relieve isolated bottlenecks. But when they take priority over public transport, walkable streets, affordable housing, healthcare, education, water, public space and basic safety, they become a misuse of public money. Islamabad’s transport policy is increasingly judged by what can be built, photographed and opened. One junction gets an underpass; congestion shifts; another project follows. The Capital Development Authority is working on Kashmir Chowk after Shaheen Chowk and the Margalla Road underpass. Each is sold as a victory over traffic. Moving cars faster through one junction is not economic progress. 

The issue is opportunity cost. Every rupee spent on visible road infrastructure is a rupee not spent on systems that move more people, improve health, reduce risk or connect poorer households to jobs and services. The more photogenic project is not necessarily the more productive one. The test is simple: does public spending raise productivity, widen access and reduce preventable risk? An underpass may remove a genuine bottleneck, but that only justifies assessment, not automatic approval. Each project should be weighed against alternatives: bus routes, safe pavements and crossings, hospital upgrades, better schools, affordable housing, water supply and basic services near opportunity.

Pakistan should have learnt this lesson from the power sector. The country created generation capacity beyond what its transmission and distribution systems could absorb. The result was not reliable, affordable electricity. It was a capacity-payment trap in which consumers and the economy were asked to pay for capacity that could not be fully used because the rest of the system had not been developed alongside it. Islamabad risks repeating that mistake. It is adding road capacity without building the water, transport, hospitals, schools, parks, drainage and municipal services needed for a growing population. Underpasses without these systems are the urban equivalent of power plants without transmission lines: visible structures attached to a weak network.

Islamabad’s programme also avoids the central transport question: why should the default be faster private-car movement rather than moving more people without cars? Reliable buses serve students, workers and jobseekers. Safe pavements and crossings make short trips possible without petrol. These options deserve the same fiscal seriousness as concrete megaprojects. The distributional question is sharper still: who benefits most? Much of the network appears to serve senior officials, visiting dignitaries and affluent commuters moving through the protected geography of the capital, from Rawalpindi and the airport corridor towards Parliament, the Presidency, the Prime Minister’s House and other high-security areas. Ordinary motorists may also use these roads, but the investment pattern suggests elite mobility has been treated as a public priority. 

That image is misleading. A smooth airport-to-government route says little about conditions for ordinary citizens. It can obscure overcrowded hospitals, weak schools, unsafe streets, poor sanitation, unreliable transport, inadequate water and the daily struggle of people who cannot move through the city with the same ease. A capital should not be judged by how quickly a dignitary reaches a compound. It should be judged by how easily citizens reach work, education, healthcare, markets and public services.

This privileged geography also extends to the Diplomatic Enclave. Islamabad has created islands of protected mobility and superior services for diplomats, senior officials and affluent residents, while the wider population remains excluded from comparable standards of........

© The Friday Times