Pakistan Govt. serious about Mass Transit System in Mega Cities

Plan to develop urban transport system chalked out

KARACHI (March 13 2008): The federal government has chalked out a plan to develop the urban transport system and infrastructure with a view to providing fast, reliable, safe, and affordable services to the urban population. At present, the transport service and infrastructure had not kept pace with the growing demands of urban population, sources in Sindh regional transport department told Business Recorder on Tuesday. Lacks of proper management of transportation setup, urban areas are suffering from poor road condition, accidents, high-level maintenance cost of public transport, traffic congestion and air pollution, they said. Urban population is compelled to travel in overcrowded and unreliable public transport, besides poorly regulating it by concerned departments, they maintained.

Hope that such buses may ply on Pakistan's Mega Cities

Despite the rapid increase in private vehicles, which are being flooded on roads with more than 50 percent increasing ratio every year, no effective policy has been evolved yet to develop the proper road infrastructure for catering to the need of growing population, they said.

Answering a query, they said the government had designed a comprehensive and effective plan to overwhelm the need of more transport infrastructure with modern maintenance system, besides inviting the private sector to participate in it.
"Condition will not be changed unless the private sector will co-ordinate with government concerned departments in making comprehensive and high quality urban transportation system to cater to the need of growing demand of urban areas", they said.

Accordance to jointly surveyed report by the National Highway Authority (NHA) and the World Bank (WB) that 47 percent of national highways have been deteriorated and only 28 percent of the network is in good condition.
"Due to insufficiency of highways, 30 to 35 percent of agri produce is being spoiled before marketing, which causes huge loss to national exchequer, besides growing inflation due to its shortage, hence, the government has decided to convert inferior roads into high quality roads, they said.

They said the government is striving to generate funds for maintenance and up-gradation of facilities such as traffic signals, roads, sidewalks, intersections, parking spaces and drains aimed to provide better transport infrastructure to urban population.

They said the authority concerned is pondering the proposal for restoring mass transit system in different cities, including Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Faisalbad, and Karachi. They hoped that mass transit system would be restored soon in these cities with a view to minimising the excessive burden on public transport, besides facilitating people by safe, reliable, fast and entertaining transport service.