Taha’s buses and Jinnah’s wish for a modern Lahore

On the 2nd of September 1951, the very first fleet of six Leyland double-decker buses were lined up outside the Punjab Assembly. The province’s first Chief Minister, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, was impressed and gave the go-ahead to make as many more as possible.

This nod for this expansion brought about a massive change in the urban life of Lahore, and solved a growing transportation problem. It is amazing how over the last 70 years our transport problems have grown, ultimately to crash, and then transportation simply disappeared. The situation today defies every transport economist, engineer and planner, let alone the citizens of this ancient city, who have an amazing ability to find simple cheap solutions.

These double-decker buses were set up by a gentleman named Zulfiqar Taha, a former London bus driver, who studied and became an automobile engineer, and finally a transport planner. So from top to bottom he understood urban transportation. He returned to British India, set up the Srinagar bus service, then came to Amritsar and set up a new bus system there, and after 1947 came to Lahore.

Once Pakistan came into being, Mr. M.A. Jinnah wished that Lahore be a modern city with an efficient transportation system. He ordered the setting up of the Lahore Omnibus Service – the LOS - and assigned Taha to solve this problem. As the country faced a financial crunch – as it still does – Mr Jinnah discussed the issue with Zulfiqar Taha who suggested a mix of double-decker and single-decker buses, depending on their route and passenger density, but insisted that Pakistan only import the chassis and engines fitted on them. The rest, he assured the Father of the Nation: “our boys are capable enough to build the rest”. That still more than holds true.

So it was that the LOS plan unfolded at the Ferozepur Road bus depot and within six months of the chassis arriving the first buses were ready. Very soon the LOS double-decker became a symbol of a modern Lahore. Amazingly the LOS started generating impressive profits and the bus company had huge reserves to import still more new chassis and engine sets. But then fate takes strange twists in Pakistan. Come 1958 and the military took over the country and very soon we see Mr Taha being replaced by an army officer. Soon one learnt that a loan had been provided by the LOS to the armed service. The collapse had truly started.

Over time bus production was halted as “a waste of foreign reserves” and the old buses started to rust as replacement parts dried up and by the time Mr. Z. A. Bhutto came to power in 1971 after the East Pakistan debacle, the LOS had virtually ceased to exist. Rusting buses filled the yards. It was a sort of national tragedy. It then dawned on the PPP government that people had started complaining about not having any transport system. They still do. This saw the entry of the auto-rickshaw, which coupled with old Morris Minor taxis with meters started to fill in the gap, but not for the poor.

But the ‘transport gap’ was simply growing and as the city expanded and distances between homes and workplaces increased, transport costs soared. Mr Bhutto moved fast and imported complete buses from Sweden. They did manage, partially, to fill in a small-term gap. But then again because of spares and an incompetent transport bureaucracy even these spanking Volvo buses started to rust. Within three years the stop-gap arrangement came to a grinding halt.

The private sector moved in to fill in the opportunity and Lahore was soon filled up with used minibuses and wagons. Undisciplined as their operation was, it must go to their credit that they managed to get the population at reasonable costs from one place to another. But even these ‘devils on the road’ could not make up for the missing transport system, especially with the population now growing annually in double figures.

Now enter the lethal motorcycle. This came with the introduction of Japanese local production, and soon Lahore had a fast and efficient method of moving from one place to another. Today Lahore has more motorcycles then all other systems combined anywhere in the world. Here let me introduce some official statistics. The Punjab Police website tells us that Lahore has almost two motorcycles for every household of seven persons on the average. This stands out as the highest ratio in the world.

So many motorcycles, and the sheer indiscipline of their mostly young underage riders, has created a major traffic hazard. It has also led to the banning of Basant, because the police has informed the government that they cannot control young daredevil ‘helmetless’ drivers. A few years ago the Mayor of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro came to Lahore and shared their common ‘motorcycle problem’. His recommendations have been put in the cold storage, like a lot of other suggestion experts make.

Among the suggestions were a control on the number of motorcycles manufactured, as well as other methods to reduce numbers. But then Rio put in place an excellent rail and bus service and their transportation problems are almost over. Almost three years ago a group of Pakistani scholars in Cambridge picked up the Zulfiqar Taha route as a method of bringing back the double and single decker buses in large numbers.

The financial package designed by these scholars was through a private bank-government guarantee route. This meant a minimum of investment. It meant that for every down-payment for a bus by an entrepreneur, within four year he would be able to double his money, plus earn from the bus operation, plus thanks to financial depreciation, manage to get back the cost of the whole bus within four years. After this period the bus would belong to the government, or the new LOS. The response from bureaucrats was predictable. “Not workable” they said. End of plan. That plan had a target of introducing almost 500 buses a year.

Now let me put in perspective the gap by comparing Lahore to London to understand the massive need. The population of London in February 2022, is 9,541,000. The city has 8,600 buses operating on 700 routes serving 19,000 bus stops. London also has an Underground Tube Train service with 11 lines covering 402 kms covering 242 stations and transporting five million passengers with 543 trains. Surely this is a model worth following. It will take time, but it is certainly achievable.

The solution surely lies in following the plan set forth by Zulfiqar Taha, as instructed by the Quaid-i-Azam. Today all we have to do is import the engines, build the chassis within Pakistan – times have changed - and the body can very easily be handled by the scores of bus bodybuilding firms. It is being done in India. Surely once we overcome our patriotic fervour a little co-operation would be useful.

Let private parties invest Rs10 million per bus, and the rest they should get from a bank with a government bank guarantee. Let them run the service and within three years get their money back. Let them also keep the profit and provide the government Rs3 per passenger. The bus design and colour should be officially approved.

At this stage building a Tube Train is not possible. But then planning one is possible. After all the London service was started by the private sector. The possibilities are all there in hundreds of proposals presented by well-meaning Pakistani entrepreneurs. Sadly, the cold storage in the Lahore Civil Secretariat surely must be massive.