The Defence Housing Authority (DHA) is regarded as 'the place to live in Lahore. At least this is what its administrators would have you believe. If you ask me, they have little cause to boast. Their deficient planning can be gauged from the Phase I itself if you start examining the road while coming via the Cavalry. As you come down the road, there is a PSO petrol pump on the right of the small T-junction. Around this place, you find a number of houses without buffer of a footpath between the fast flowing road and the gates of these ill-fated houses. That there have to be footpaths never occurred to the planners of DHA. The footpaths are a rarity you wont find easily in the DHA. Except for a couple of main roads, the roads are also so narrow that no where can two cars run side by side. In case two cars are coming from opposite sides and have to cross each other, they have to run over the small green belt maintained by owners of the houses lining the road. In order to forestall overrunning of their outer greenbelts, most house-owners place heavy rocks bordering the belt. At many a dangerous crossing, there are no traffic lights. And the cats-eyes are ubiquitous, affixed needlessly almost everywhere in a most stupid manner. As the number of cars multiplies with time, traffic in DHA is becoming increasingly hazardous and chaotic. Accidents are on the increase. So are the cases of road rage. The British laid Mall Road of Lahore almost 150 years ago. That road is only now showing signs of failure in coping with the increased traffic of a century and half later. The DHA was planned some thirty odd years back. It is failing now. -DR. AASIYA SIDDIQUE, Lahore, April 30.