Project managers plan to replant trees during the course of construction
KARACHI: A number of Green Line bus projects were started in Karachi with former city nazim Naimatullah Khan who imported buses from Sweden and Mustafa Kamal, who reared the Green Bus project with locally manufactured buses. Now, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has begun the Green Bus project but interestingly, all of these buses are on the same route from Surjani Town to MA Jinnah Road. There are many routes on which buses should run but why does everyone start the project on the same route?
The buses lying idle should be revived and secondly, Prime Minister Sharif should create a separate board to run the bus system. If these buses are given to the Sindh government transport department to operate, they will face the same fate once his party’s leadership is gone as previously happened with the other bus projects. No system can survive without good governance and rule of law. Both of these lack in Sindh. In the past, almost 10 transport systems, including the Karachi Transport Corporation, the Karachi Circular Railway, the Green Bus project, and the Karachi Road Transport Corporation, failed because of these very reasons.
Karachi’s Green Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System will help reduce people’s travel woes, but it comes at the cost of environmental loss. There is no denying the fact that development is necessary but it should not come at the cost of the environment. Our city planners should keep environmental concerns in mind while undertaking development projects. According to some reports, thousands of trees will be chopped down to make way for the long route of the BRT project in Karachi. Project managers plan to replant trees during the course of construction. In the former mayor’s tenure, promises were made to plant thousands of new trees but only a few hundred trees were planted.
Lastly, a new pedestrian bridge was made for the construction of the BRT project in Karachi so the old bridge that was removed, which was located in district central, should be relocated to another spot like along the road that goes from the SITE area to Hassan Square; that stretch has many points in desperate need of pedestrian bridges.
Ghazanfar Ali Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2016.
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