Bus Service in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD, Aug 20: Five firms have been short-listed by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to run a bus service in the city on public-private partnership basis, it is learnt.
A CDA official told Dawn on Wednesday that the firms had experience in operating local and inter-city transport and included Daewoo and Varan Tours.

Since the private companies have intimated that they don't consider the venture “lucrative and profitable”, the CDA may have to subsidise the bus service, according to the official.
Originally, the CDA, as the public partner, was to open its roads to the chosen bus company and lease out land to gas station operators, the third partner in the venture, for establishing special CNG filling stations for the bus service.

Earlier this year the Capital Development Authority had selected a firm for operating a CNG-run bus service but the agreement collapsed when CDA refused the firm's demand for land to establish its own CNG station.

“Now the CDA has decided to lease land for the purpose to a third party, not to the bus company,” said a CDA official.

CDA has already notified a board, with government officials and representatives of the public on it, to manage the affairs of the planned public transport system.

“We will definitely put the system in place in four months,” CDA chairman Kamran Lashari reaffirmed to on Dawn Wednesday. He was confident that with the local administration and the Punjab Transport Authority on board it will be a success.

According to Mr Lashari the bus service is a component of the Mass Transit System (MTS) that is in the designing phase.

The MTS comprising buses, mono-trains and underground railway is planned to be a durable solution of the transport problems of the twin cities.

Daewoo and Varan are thought to be the leading bidders in operating the bus service. While the former has experience in operating bus services on inter-city routes, the later had operated buses in Rawalpindi and Islamabad a few years ago before a van operators’ cartel drove in the two cities drove it out of business through court action. However, Varan buses returned to the Rawalpindi roads, with some destinations in Islamabad, recently under new terms offered by the Punjab Transport Authority.

Islamabad has the unenviable distinction of being the only capital in the world which has no proper public transport system, leaving its car-less citizens to the mercy of greedy taxi drivers and van operators.

By international standards the federal capital's one million people should have 500 buses at their service. But the CDA's plan envisages running some 100 buses - with 30 to 40 in the initial stage.