‘Affordable Transport facilities needed for Karachi City’

Urban planners and experts stressed on the need for providing respectable and affordable public transport and mass transit facilities to people in Karachi on the pattern of modern cities all across the world.

The experts shared this opinion in a seminar ‘Transport Sector and Land Management in Karachi’, organised by the NGO Shehri-CBE in collaboration with Friedrich Naumann Foundation, here at a local hotel on Friday.

People from different walks of life including policymakers, government functionaries, Mass Transit Cell authorities and public transport representatives attended the seminar to discuss the issues and possible solutions for providing better commuting facilities to the citizens in future.

An impressive presentation was given by Managing Director Karachi Urban Transport Corporation (KUTC), Ijaz Khilji, who told the participants that the 44-kilometers long Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) is expected to be revived by 2014.

“The project will be completed with a cost of 1553 million US dollars, most of which would be provided by the JICA. The project would provide transport facilities to 0.6 million to nearly 2 million people per day,” he informed.

Khilji said that some studies for the revival of KCR are underway while most of them have already been completed with the help of international agencies. “Upon its completion, the project would provide respectable and affordable traveling facilities to people within the city,” he said.

“Around 5500 households would be resettled from 28 localities that are established on railway lands. Every affected family would be provided Rs. 50000 and an 80 yards plot for resettlement. After the completion of the project, KUTC will become a regulatory body like NEPRA and it would have a committee to decide the fares that would be compatible to the existing public transport fares,” he informed.

Karachi Transport Ittehad (KTI) Chairman Irshad Hussain Bukhari mainly discussed the issues faced by transporters in Karachi. “Despite rampant corruption, torture, burning of busses on almost daily basis and killings of drivers’/conductors, transporters are providing affordable transportation facilities to people,” he said.

He acknowledged that there were issues including poor condition of buses and attitude of transport operators. “There is no leasing facility available for the transporters to bring new vehicles on the roads nor is there any facility of providing training to drivers and conductors,” he explained.

Bukhari said that corruption was rampant in traffic police and other departments associated with the transport sector. He suggested for the revival of magistrate system in the transport sector so that drivers who violate traffic laws could be sent to jails for the offences committed by them.

He also called for reopening of the drivers’ training school located at Manghopir so that drivers and conductors could be provided mandatory one-month training before coming onto the roads.

Bukhari also called for provision of loans from commercial banks to transporters so that they could bring CNG busses on roads and also suggested that government should provide them the depots of defunct KTC on rent to resolve parking issues.

EDO Transport of City District Government Karachi (CDGK) Iftikhar Qaimkhani called for an integrated mass transit system in the city. “There are 2.2 million vehicles plying on city roads, of which only 5 per cent were public transport vehicles that cater to the needs of 70 per cent population. Private vehicles especially cars and motorcycles form the major portion of vehicles plying on the roads but they only cater to the transportation needs of 30 per cent people in the city,” he said.

Qaimkhani also discussed the issue of inter-city busses including bus terminals for these vehicles as well CNG buses. “Without having an integrated mass transit system comprising of Bus Rapid Transit, Light Rail Transit and KCR, transportation issues in Karachi cannot be redressed,” he said.

Urban planner and member of Shehri-CBE, Farhan Anwar and General Secretary Shehri-CBE, Amber Alibhai, also spoke on the occasion. The seminar was followed by a question-answer session in which participants raised several questions regarding the present and future transport strategies and issues in the city.