Urban planning: Badami Bagh bus terminal to be replaced with three at city exits

Some transporters claim they have not been consulted.

LAHORE: The City District Government Lahore (CDGL) has decided to shift the Badami Bagh bus terminal to three separate locations outside the city, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The CDGL had identified a few locations on Multan Road and near Kala Shah Kaku. Transporters, however, did not agree to these sites.

The CDGL has, however, decided to set up three bus terminals to replace the Badami Bagh terminal in Lahore. The first terminal is planned near Kala Shah Kaku on the Grand Trunk Road, north of Lahore. The second terminal would be located to the west of the city on Multan Road. The third site is on Ferozepur Road, south of Lahore.

The CDGL is keen to construct these terminals at the entrances to the city and hope that this way the increasing traffic problems in the city will be controlled.

A CDGL officer said, “At least 700 kanals land is required to build a bus terminal” and transporters would never agree to move if the CDGL only shifts the bus terminal. “Until auto workshops, auto markets and truck stands are part of the shift along with the terminal, this issue will not be resolved.” He added that separate land adjacent to the terminal needs to be allocated for rest areas and restaurants for transporters.

“Badami Bagh terminal, if re-located properly by the CDGL, can serve the city for the next hundred years,” Arshad Niazi, general secretary of the All Pakistan Transport Owners Association (APTOA) said. He said that his organisation was not satisfied with the sites the CDGL had identified. Instead, he said, “If the CDGL shifts all government offices from the terminal and converts Ghalla Mandi into a parking lot then all the problems would be solved.”

Niazi said that the CDGL was not taking them on board with its plans; rather it was consulting some non-representative transporter organisations. He said the new terminals could not be successful in the absence of a reliable urban transport structure. The passengers would have to enter Lahore by “motorcycle rickshaws and mini-buses” and everybody knows about the havoc they create, he added.

Niazi said the current Badami Bagh terminal had every facility it needed. He said the bus bodies were manufactured close by and important wholesale markets were located near the terminal.

“Merchants who come from various parts of the Punjab to Lahore to visit these markets will be hugely inconvenienced now,” he said.

DCO Lahore Ahad Cheema said that the decision to shift the terminals outside Lahore was no longer negotiable. Still, he said, it will be more than a year before the shift begins. He said that the Town Engineering and Planning Agency (TEPA) was working on the plan and construction would start immediately after planning was completed. Cheema claimed that transporters were on board and that all decisions had been taken after consulting their representatives. He said that some transporters still did not agree but they did not represent the majority. Once the terminal was shifted, all reservations will disappear, he remarked.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2011.