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Long-thread: A Sunday morning well-spent exploring Lahore’s Orange-line Light-rail metro train with @gulraizkhan.

One thing I can tell about the experience is that it was in nowhere any less than the best Metros in the developed West.


This project will remain divisive, and in no way I intend on converting anyone. Skip.

Neither will its utility increase nor decrease by this Twitter cost-benefits blabbering.

What I am truly happy about is that Orangeline is owned and being used by those who need it the most.

The cars we use have a Heater & AC. The new ones also have a cabin filter against pollution. They harm everyone outside but user is safe inside. Then cars also cause congestion and accidents.

We don’t realise it while driving, but navigating spaces is important for everyone.


We know that cars, which serve less than 20% of all trips, are bad for our cities. Yet they have been getting disproportionately higher share in budgets in the form of allocations for Road in Transport spending.

A mass transit project flips this equation.

There is also very real loss that construction works of the project caused, which, we, as bystanders, cannot fully understand.

We need to move to inclusive infrastructural planning, rather cold-hearted bureaucratic logic which dictates that who
A few half-baked thoughts on Laschet and Syria and some such.

First off, it's revolting to see any mainstream politician spread what appear to be conspiracy theories about atrocities committed by the Assad regime in the Syrian war. In fact, to *volunteer* them. Unprompted. /1


I stopped counting the dozens of friends, colleagues, officials from around the world, but in particular, the Middle East, who have sent me his tweets over the past week. The common response from Berlin appears to be an uncomfortable "well, he's not a foreign policy guy..." /2

But he is! I think it's easy to underestimate the man and his jovial, slightly pudgy and self-deprecating persona. There's also a tendency in Berlin and outside to confuse regional politics (and accents!) for provincialism. But Laschet is from Aachen - in the heart of Europe. /3

His first job in politics was with Hans Stercken, then-chairman of the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, in the tumultuous mid-late 80s. As a new member of Bundestag in 1994, he joined the committees for int development, EU affairs, and foreign affairs (as an alternate). /4

Some headlines refer to him as a "Merkel-loyalist". At least when I flipped thru his record from the 90s, I got a sense of a man with profound convictions: A passionate European. But also an early proponent of CDU-Greens rapprochement based on a shared moralistic worldview. /5