POLICY: THE CASE FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT |
Pakistan’s fuel vulnerability is usually discussed as an economic problem. It is that, but it is also a national security problem. Every few years, some external shock reminds the country how exposed it is to imported fuel and how quickly that exposure filters down into inflation, fiscal stress, and everyday hardship.
The latest crisis as a result of the war in Iran is only the newest example. Reuters reports that soaring prices and fears of shortages have already pushed up demand for electric motorbikes, after disruption around the Strait of Hormuz rattled Pakistan’s transport economy. What this episode exposes is how fragile Pakistan’s transport model really is.
Pakistan has built a transport system that leaves both the state and ordinary households hostage to fossil fuels, which is largely imported. The country’s urban development model has been built around the creation of signal free corridors that incentivise private transport. Reuters notes that about 40 percent of Pakistan’s petrol is used by two and three-wheelers in a country where public transport remains inadequate and that, after the latest fuel-price hike, a median household was spending 31 percent of its daily income on a litre of petrol.
THE COST OF TRANSPORT
Transport costs do not rise in the abstract. They rise for workers getting to their jobs, for parents trying to reach schools and clinics, and for households already struggling to absorb inflation. For wealthier groups, a fuel shock is painful, but for poorer groups, it can be destabilising. The World Bank estimates that economic instability and inflation pushed an additional 13 million Pakistanis into poverty over the last few years, raising the poverty rate to 25.3 percent in 2023-24.
Pakistan frames its transport crisis as an affordability problem. It is actually an institutional one — and every fuel shock makes the cost of that confusion clearer
Pakistan frames its transport crisis as an affordability problem. It is actually an institutional one — and every fuel shock makes the cost of that confusion clearer
Once households slide backward, recovery is slow. Recent ridership data released in a tweet by the Punjab government points in the same direction. Comparing a paid day with three fare-free days, the government reported a 60 percent increase in ridership, equivalent to roughly 528,000 additional passengers per day.
Read in isolation, that looks like a simple story about fare sensitivity. But in the context of recent fuel-price increases, it reveals that a large number of households are being pushed towards public transport not only by fares, but also by the rising cost of private mobility itself. Put simply, when fuel shocks hit, demand for affordable, collective transport surfaces immediately.
The people showing up on those fare-free days are not a statistical abstraction. They are workers who have been absorbing private transport costs because no reliable alternative existed. They are women for whom a rickshaw fare is not a minor inconvenience but a real constraint on whether a job outside the neighbourhood is worth taking. They are households that have quietly been running a daily........